Phone Meeting 2006-01-24 15:30 UT

Participants: PrebenGrosbol, DanielPonz, ChristianSurace, ThijsVanDerHulst, BillCotton, RichardHook, MarkoUllgren, MartinoRomaniello^?, DougTody

Agenda and minutes

1. General information
   • Change in membership - AstroGrid, SAMPO
     • AstroGrid has agreed to be represented in our Network by KeithNoddle^? as full member. At the same time DavidGiaretta was made associated member until we find a UK substitute for him.
     • MartinoRomaniello^? has replaced PalleMoller as chair of the SAMPO Science Advisory Committee. Thus, he will also take over Palle's membership in our Network. MR gave a short summary of his ESO functions which include heading the DMD Dataflow Operations department and being responsible for VLT data quality and products.
   • Our annual report to OPTICON
     • Our 2005 report has to be submitted to OPTICON around the end of January (see action). Beside summarizing our activities last year, we also have to request funding for the next period. Assuming that we also this year will have two face-to-face meetings (and therefore similar to last year) PG will request the same amount for 2006 which is in line with our initial proposal.
   • Next face-to-face meeting
     • We should start planning for our next face-to-face meeting which probably should be in the period May-June. As a default it would be held in ESO Garching but if anybody is willing to arrange it, please contact PG. The period is busy in ESO with many official meeting so it may be difficult to get rooms. Thus, we should try to fix the dates at next phone meeting.
     • DT remarked that the first weeks of May should be avoided due to IVOA meetings.
     • There was a short discussion on our fall meeting again should be held in connection with the ADASS conference. PG remarked that OPTICON would probably not be able to cover transatlantic travel but could support additional cost at the ADASS meeting for a face-to-face meeting.
2. Upgrading high-level requirements
   • Adding explanations to requirements
     • The general plan for the high-level requirements was to add some descriptive text to the individual requirements, preform a written review of them and discussed controversial issues at our next face-to-face meeting. Since this process will take at least 3 months, we need to start now.
     • PG will start the process but would like volunteers to help. DP agreed to participate. Any others willing to contribute should e-mail PG. It is expected that the revision will be started in early February.
3. Basic interface specifications
   • Start defining interface
     • It is important also to start the definition of interface as this is the other major topic for the next face-to-face meeting. Further, it would be an advantage to have a basic definition which potential proto-types could use. The first interfaces to define would be those for parameter passing, container-component interactions, and logging.
     • PG asked if the CASA project already had a set of specifications we could look on. DT reported that CASA had defined a parameter XML structure and had worked on a command line interface. There were little detailed information on the web but we should ask CASA if there were internal information which we could get access to (see action).
4. Trivial proto-types
   • Plans and activities
     • DT reported that NVO was now working on data access protocols. The first objective was image access including local and remote access to multi dimensional images such as radio maps.
     • There was a discussion on possible option for software busses such as ICE, DBus and CORBA (see PhoneMeeting20051220). DT had looked into the DBus. It offers basic interprocess communication and is used in most Linux system. GNOME and KDE have plans to use DBus but are not doing it yet. DBus has a XML definition of interfaces. It may be interesting to try but does not yet offer features at the level provided by ICE.
     • It was emphasized that it is important to stay independent of a specific SW-bus implementation (e.g. CORBA). In this respect, a simple command line interface was important as it would be independent and offer a way to use tool based on simple shell commands.
     • ChristianSurace informed that talks on proto-typing effors ave started between French and Italian institutes. It is expected that an agreement on the scope will be reached in mid-February. CS will report on this at our next phone meeting.
5. Actions
   • Status of open actions (see ActionList)
   • Summary of new actions (see below)
6. Time for next phone meeting
   • Suggestion: 2006-02-21 15:30 UT (16:30 CET)
7. Any other business

Please add what I forgot and correct my errors.

-- PrebenGrosbol - 25 Jan 2006
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