Web Archives and Queries
Remaining tasks are listed on DetailedWorkNeeded
The second aspect of this project will be constructing a web service that will be able to query and search the data set, and making this available through VO services. This will build on the work done by Albert Teoh in constructing the web archive, and extending this to provide VO Cone Search queries that return VOTables.
There is a document that details various aspects of the implementation of the archive and the VO queries: see source:trunk/docs/VOimplementation.pdf
The main query page is at http://pulsararchive-int.atnf.csiro.au.
The conesearch web service can be found at http://pulsararchive-int.atnf.csiro.au/conesearch.php and can be called by using the RA, DEC and SR parameters, for instance: http://pulsararchive-int.atnf.csiro.au/conesearch.php?RA=0.&DEC=-49.&SR=1. should provide an XML file in your browser. Alternatively, use something like wget to download it quickly:
wget -O output_file http://pulsararchive-int.atnf.csiro.au/conesearch.php\?RA=0.\&DEC=-49.\&SR=1.
and view it with something like TOPCAT: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/.
Registering a VO service
Once we have a VO Cone Search service up and running, we will want to register it so that people can see it. This is a reasonably straight-forward procedure as it is basically providing a set of metadata about the service to a registry. Some registries can be found at:
- NVO: see Section 3.1 on http://www.us-vo.org/pubs/files/PublishHowTo.html for links
- Euro-VO : see http://www.euro-vo.org/pub/tc/registries.html for links
It is unclear whether it is sufficient to register at just one registry, or whether they are still independent (the aim is for one registration to be sufficient, but are we at that point yet?). This needs to be followed up.
The full list of metadata that can be provided to describe a service is detailed in the IVOA document on Resource Metadata: http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/RM.html. Most of the registration pages are forms where specific fields are filled in, often depending on the type of service being registered.
