Open SkyQuery - VO Compliant Dynamic Federation of Astronomical Archives
Tamás Budavári, Alexander S. Szalay, J. Gray, William O’Mullane, R. Williams, A. Thakar, Tanu Malik, Naoki Yasuda, Robert G. Mann · Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) XIII · 2003
We discuss the redesign of the SkyQuery architecture, orig- inally built as a simple proof of concept for dynamic federation of astro- nomical archives. In keeping with the Virtual Observatory philosophy of hierarchical services, the design of Open SkyQuery is based upon higher level services extending the basic functionality of the current VO stan- dard, the ConeSearch. Open SkyQuery implements the VO specifications for data access, retrieval and spatial join. Data are published via Web Services called SkyNodes providing a rich functionality including foot- print coverage. SkyNodes are discovered through the VO registry. We propose to have at least two levels of SkyNode compliance (Basic and Full). We will also provide templates for publishing data into a SkyNode.