The AstroGrid Project Development Wiki

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ReleasePlan2009

Ancient top-level material....

Project Description

Astrogrid is a ~£14M (over the period 2001-2009) project aimed at building a data-grid for UK astronomy, which will form the UK contribution to a global VirtualObservatory. It is also one of several Grid projects in the UK's e-Science initiative - more information on these can be obtained from the National E-science Centre. Astrogrid is funded via the UK's Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council(PPARC), now by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (http://www.stfc.ac.uk) and by the European Commission. The project was formally started on 2001 September 1, with the first phase ending Dec 2004, the current extension to Dec 2007, with the transition to full operations phase completing end 2009.

From the project's initial (2001) proposal:

Project Release

AstroGrid Release v1.0

AstroGrid is pleased to announce the availability of its Release v1.0. You are encouraged to register and use the UK's Virtual Observatory system.

This is a preliminary, shared-risks, release - the system is not yet fully documented, and has some known bugs. However it is useful for science already and so we encourage astronomers register, use the system, and provide us their feedback.

Find out more from the release v1.0 pages

Project Science

AstroGrid is focused on delivering a system of relevance to its end user astronomy community. Details of how to make best use of AstroGrid to support your science are given at these AgScience pages.

The initial AstroGrid Science Requirements Document was derived from the key Phase-B science drivers. The Architecture that was adopted so as to facilitate the delivery of the capabilities required (from an analysis of the science drivers) is fundamental to AstroGrid.

Deployment and Operations

The AstroGrid system is being deployed in the UK - forming the UK's Virtual Observatory. Further, infrastructural components developed by AstroGrid will form the back bone of the Euro-VO. It is also being used by an increasing number of external groups.

Details of Deployment and Operations are given from these AgDeploy pages

Project Planning

The AstroGrid project started in three stages - an initial Phase A study, a Phase B construction stage, and a follow-on project, imaginatively entitled AstroGrid-2, which began in January 2005. It is now entering into the Operational phase, which with further imagination is known as AstroGrid-3, starting in January 2008 and initially funded for 2 years.

AstroGrid-2 settled into a six-month planning cycles which will be continued into AstroGrid-3 although with less emphasis on delivering product and much more on sustaining an operation service. There is an overall long term plan, but a review process before every six months produces a more concrete set of goals and deliverables, summarised in a top-level "Cycle Plan". A detailed Project Plan for the Cycle is then produced. Details for AstroGrid-2 can be found here, whilst details for Astrogrid-3 can be found here.

Progress on the project is tracked on the Oversight Pages, and is monitored by the PPARC AstroGrid Oversight Committee.

Project Meetings and Events

The twice yearly AstroGrid Full Consortium project meetings are the Project's two day checkpoint and strategy events.

AstroGrid also organises or particpates in a range of workshops aimed at informing and illustrating the use of VO systems to the scientific community.

The full range of meetings, both internal and external can be found at:

• AgMeetings: calendar listing all Astrogrid meetings - e.g. WGL, TSP, project Meetings, Oversight committees and so forth.
• ConfsMeetings: conferences (inc AVO and IVOA meetings) of interest to project people and a list of who from Astrogrid that will be attending

Papers, presentations and reports given by members of the AstroGrid project at meetings can be found at:

• MeetingsPresentations: list of conferences and meetings attended by team members (with presentations available for download)

Workshops

AstroGrid also organises or particpates in a range of workshops aimed at informing and illustrating the use of VO systems to the scientific community. AstroGrid orgainises both science workshops aimed at the end user astronomer community - and technical workshops aimed at the resource provider community. Other workshop injclude those aimed at the developer communuity and at partner missions.

Templates and Logos

Workers on the project will often wish to create presentations and documents. Go to the TemplatesLogosEtc page to find document and presentation templates, logos and other useful artefacts that will help in creating them.

Background and Misc

For more information on the Astrogrid project, have a look at:

• RbProjectVision and Vision poster (jpg format)
• the project's page in the VO wiki: VO.AstroGrid (but it is much the same as this)
• the project Portal

• the Forum
• the News site
• the LeadInvestigators & TeamMembers pages and where they are/ will be
• the TechnicalSupportPanel pages
• the SoftwareDevelopment pages
• the AG2 Planning pages
• the AGLI pages
• AGLI monthly telecon notes
• the AstroGrid Oversight pages
• the AstroGrid Science Advisory Group pages
• the AstroGrid Deployment Group pages
• the Deployment wiki
• the 'Astrogrid 10' Science Problems
• and AstroGrid is also working in partnership with a number of other projects and external collaborators

Other information in this web includes:

• DocStore: documents produced by team members for the project
• ContactsPage: lists of contacts
• Glossary: definitions of terms used, eg ResourceDirectory, MySpace
• PhaseBStructure: packages for Phase B
• TopicTracking: people assigned to track topics of importance to the project
• WorkPackages: description and pointers to Phase A work packages
• SRD: Science Requirements Document. Information about use cases, sequence diagrams, and library functions.

Useful information in other webs incudes:

• ScienceProblemList: problems that it is expected a VO may solve and from which AstroGrid will pick the ones it might be able to solve, as listed in the AstroGrid ScienceProblems page
• UseCaseList: how one would expect to use a VO to solve problems: AstroGrid will pick the ones it might be able to implement as listed in the AstroGrid UseCases page.
• GridServiceMethodList: suggested methods that Astrogrid services may implement.