Vision of what the Network wants to achieve

The GeneralObjectives gives the high level objectives for the work of this Network within OPTICON. Beside such general aims, it is important to have a clear vision of what the discussions of this Network will achieve and how this relates to other developments in the astronomical community. This page tries to do this by first listing some of the current issues related to data analysis, then stating what must be achieved, and lastly outlining the benefits this will bring.

The major issues facing astronomers who want to analyze their data may be summarized as follows:

• there exists many different systems but:
  • they are largely incompatible with respect to scripting language
  • it is complicated to share data between them
  • interesting application from other systems cannot be easily used
• current systems provide limited interfaces to Web services and archive
• it is difficult to fully exploit available computer resources

To resolve these problems, we must achieve the following things:

• make it possible to use important legacy applications from current systems from a common environment
• provide an easy to use platform for development of new tasks
• increase the ability to collaborate and of sharing of software
• support easy access to resources such as archives, Virtual Observatories, and GRID computing
• improve the efficiency and speed with which one can analyze astronomical data

-- PrebenGrosbol - 16 Jul 2004
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