Initial ideas on Virtual Observatory Action Plan

• we produced a Data Inventory of all SOTERIA data that we want to take into account for the Virtual Observatory action plan.
• we concluded that the vast majority of the data consists of solar images, stored in FITS files. We will hence kick-off of the VO effort for these. We presume that once this is settled, timelines and dynamic spectra will be treated in a similar way.
• we want to standardize the FITS keyword structure and filename convention of all SOTERIA data as much as possible. This standard will be based on the SOHO conventions and the Global Halpha Network conventions.
• Obviously not every institute can be expected to reprocess all its historic data to comply with the new standard. We will develop an IDL SSW library for SOTERIA containing routines to convert SOTERIA image files into image objects. The read method of these objects will depend on the type/source of the image and handle any remaining non-standard aspects of the FITS file.
• The WP6 will develop a template for these objects and read methods but it is up to the PI teams to write a read method for their particular instrument data.
• The IDL SSW library will contain other routines that operate on the standard objects and extract usefull parameters as defined by the other work packages. These routines need to be developed by the other SOTERIA work packages and/or developed in coordination with WP6.
• access to the image files across the network will be organised through a database. This database will contain all the standardized metadata as contained in the image objects. It will also contain a procedure to acquire the particular image across the network. In the simplest situation, this procedure is a fixed URL per image. In more complicated circumstances, this procedure is a SOAP call to a Virtual Observatory.
• in practise the database is probably organised in different tables: one that describes static information (eg institute/instrument), one that describes data availibility and coverage. and one that describes the individual images.
• it will be investigated how external virtual observatories can use the above described database to locate all SOTERIA data
• the SWB-server will be based on the above image objects.