The VO compared to Other O

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THE US NATIONAL VIRTUAL OBSERVATORY
The VO compared to Other Os
Jim Gray Microsoft
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The Big Picture online-science
The Big Problems

• Data ingest
• Managing a petabyte
• Common schema
• How to organize it?
• How to reorganize it?
• How to coexist with others?

• Query and Visualization tools
• Support/training
• Performance
• Execute queries in a minute
• Batch (big) query scheduling

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There Are LOTS of Observatories

• High Energy Physics
• Mission To Planet Earth (EOS)
• Geology/Seismology
• Oceanography
• Hydrology
• Climate
• Agriculture
• Ecology / Biosphere
• Genomics/Proteomics/
• Epidemiology/Medicine /
• And Astronomy

Eventually, they will all be integrated into a
world-wide digital library
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Astro VO compared to X VO
Similarities
Differences

• Community
• Diverse groups do not see common issues
• Building islands of information (stovepipes)
• Need cyber-infrastructure but
• Have no funds to pay for it
• Horrified by price
• Disappointed in past investments
• No charter for data curation preservation
• Domain
• New instruments imply new science methods
• Forced to objectify the science
• Current tools inadequate for data avalanche (from
  sensors and simulators)
• Data avalanche requires
• New tools
• New algorithms (data mining)
• Data management and lineage (provenance)
• Spatial and temporal data is a central problem.

• Community
• Started sooner (80s)
• All literature online
• Have data sharing tradition
• Smaller (1e4 professionals)
• More cohesive
• Astronomers know Math Tech
• No commercial/privacy issues
• Domain
• Data is simpler
• UCD common base vocabulary
• Survey data volume is hugeSystematic and
  well-documented
• Good analysis and simulationat least by
  comparison.

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Personal Observations

• World-Wide Telescope (VO NVO) is a model for
  other domains (widely cited).
• It is important to
• Document successes and failures
• Share tools and techniques
• Benefit from others advances and tools
• Pioneer problem areas
• Common data model / definitions
• Curation
• Preservation
• Tools (visualization, analysis, spatial,
  temporal,