Sussex Workshop Feb 2006: Feedback and After Workshop Support

At the conclusion of the workshop, we'll capture the feedback arising on the meeting wiki pages.

After one month, we will contact attendees to ask for their experience in using AstroGrid after the meeting.

We'd like to get an idea of how to improve AstroGrid, espeically in the following areas:

• Ease of use
• Range of data available, what should be added in
• Applications, what more should be provided in the workflows, as desktop clients
• Help and documentation, is the help - e.g. http://software.astrogrid.org/userdocs/index.html - useful, what about the online help in the workbench

Initial responses to "What is a VO and what do you want from it? "

• Single interface to different multi-wavelength data sources
  • want to send the same query to different data sources
    • could construct it in language of choice if it is compatible with RPC (even IDL executibles)
  • could insert tools in front in the workflow if additional info wanted
  • need good coverage information and data characterisation
  • "never have to worry about native data/catalogue format again"
• Don't want to have to know exact data sets before querying - e.g. want to find all catalogues with photometric redshift data covering a region.
  • presently can select data from any catalogue using compex criteria from Vizier but would have to get data out and into AstroGrid manually for further workflow processing.
• Analysis tools which work on heterogenous data
• Access to catalogues of simulated data
• Reusable workflows
• Interested in data processing tools but wary of black boxes
  • want to be able to include user settings
  • but maybe would find it useful if a tool was sufficiently well used to be accepted as reliable (e.g. SExtractor).
  • so need rapid response to feedback.
• Want to publish own tools
  • to include in workflows
  • to get feedback from other users
• Want to know about what is going to be observed?
  • How could one make survey proposers publish their intentions
• Modelling
  • comparing results with observed data
  • publish modelling tool
  • using VO for access to computing resources
• Useful to have AstroGrid test routines so that users could check that things were doing what they expected
• Ability to set user defaults
• Authentication, Authorisation, Access
  • Selective authentication for access to restricted data
  • Open access (at least to some resources) for outreach
  • Resource providers may want logging of access to resources.

Interests:

• X-ray clusters
• SDSS
• Photometric redshifts
• IR surveys - data provider.
• Publishing tools
• Comparing real data with catalogues of simulated data

Meeting Feedback (Weds 3 Feb 2006)

During the wrapping up demo sessions and the following Q+A sessions the following issues were raised:

• Most attendees thought that they would be wanting to use AstroGrid again
• The workbench was good, but
  • help and documentation needed to be improved, with a more consistent feel
  • the use of dialogues in e.g. saving files, etc, should be consistent across all workbench functions
  • error messages should try to give a clearer idea of where the error lay, so user, resource, workflow, network etc.
• astroscope is a good tool
  • try to make it easier to plot, image returned resources. helper apps such as vospec will be good here
• data acces is getting better, but some key sets notfully visible yet:
  • all the SWIRE fields
  • sql queries of SDSS catalogues
• performance as improved since Jul 05 - it usually works now!
  • still need to be able to load large ~1GB file to MySpace
• helper apps.
  • many had problems with mal-formed VOTable from say ViZier^?, which could not then be read by TopCat
  • understanding which servers apps required what sort of metadata - e.g. the cross matcher only worked if there were UCDs indicated with POS_EQ_RA_MAIN, POQ_EQ_DEC_MAIN
• logistics - there were quite a few problems with networks and OS's
  • some of the older MACs without OS X v10.4 Tiger, hit various problems with the workbench, such as inability to drag ad rop in the workflow builder. However, OS X v10.4 Tiger MACs worked ok
  • some problems getting the workbench to load via webstart - to do with networks with required proxies.

Overall the participants felt that it had been very useful to get tuition with the AstroGrid system. Two attendees who had been at the IoA Jul 05 thought that the system had improved to the poitn where many astronomers would now consider using the system. One had success in access the AstroGrid services from IDL, whilst another would look at making his new programmes usable within the ACR.

Still to do

• Try to complete the AgSussexFeb06GroupA workflow - which seemed to almost work by the end of the workshop!

Post Workshop Support

A number of issues have been identified in this workshop. As a result of it, several improvements have been made to the system:

• Improved documentation.
• A number of bugs which only appear in Mac OS have now been fixed.
• Astroscope has been enhanced with a number of helper applications. It is now possible to visualise and explore AstroScope results directly (images, spectra and catalogue tables) using Aladin, VOspec and TOPCat prior to downloading. Other improvements to usability are now included:
  • Toggling coordinate systems between sexagesimal and decimal for both position input and displayed offsets.
  • Search history available from a pull down menu.
  • Stop search button added.

• Work has continued towards incorporating the functionality of Astroscope into a user defined list. Although not complete, workflows now exist that query different services for an input user list. This functionality will be added to Astroscope in order that users can capture a filtered search defined in AstroScope and then repeat multiple times for any user input target list.