HR: 1330h
AN: U22A-0009    [PDF]
TI: Antelope: A Software Infrastructure for the Support of Virtual Observatories
AU: * Harvey, D J
EM: danny@brtt.com
AF: Boulder Real Time Technologies, Inc., 2045 Broadway Street Suite 400, Boulder, CO 80302 United States
AB: A clear requirement for the realization of virtual observatories across the broad scientific community is a software infrastructure, sometimes referred to as middleware, that will support the many-to-many information connections necessary for effective virtual observatory operations. There are increasing demands for virtual observatories that can deal with real-time and archive data, that can handle raw observations from a variety of sensors, processed results and metadata seamlessly, that can cross disciplinary boundaries, that can support custom user software/web development, that can be operated in a wide range of institutional settings and that uses scalable software which can be operated using a wide range of computer hardware, from small PDA class machines to massively parallel mega-machines. Antelope is a software infrastructure for support of virtual observatories that is in use throughout the world today. In our presentation we show the history of the development of Antelope and the basic requirements that were used in its development. We cover issues that are paramount for virtual observatories; interoperability, ease of development and extensions of functionality, robustness, reliability, ease of operations and scalability across a variety of hardware and mission settings. We briefly summarize the current uses and users of Antelope. We finish by discussing the technical and scientific challenges that we face today and how we imagine these will be addressed in the future.
DE: 1294 Instruments and techniques
DE: 4294 Instruments and techniques
DE: 7294 Instruments and techniques
DE: 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)
DE: 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields
SC: U
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting