[July 04, 2000] NASA's Astronomical Data Center (ADC) sponsors a number of research projects that use XML for scientific data representation. The XML activities at the ADC are sponsored and supported by the NASA Office of Space Science Applied Information Systems Research Program (AISRP).
"The staff of the Astronomical Data Center (ADC at GSFC/NASA) is researching the benefits of using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for its repository of published astronomical data. Automated pipelines have been constructed for the flow of data from scientists and/or journal presses into XML documents. Data can be retrieved through the web via a variety of query methods. In the process, an XML software toolbox is in development for the importation, enhancement, and distribution of tabled data and their associated metadata documents. A new data format has been designed that takes full advantage of the XML hierarchical view yet makes maximal use of previously standard keywords and parameters." [From "XML at the ADC", below. See some of these XML-related activities referenced below.
References:
Astronomical Dataset Markup Language Document Type Definition (DTD). Version 0.5.1 or later. "This is the Document Type Definition for the data and metadata at the Astronomical Data Center at NASA/GSFC. Within each document is the metadata for a dataset and all of the associated tables, descriptions, and history. This document description is the result of long hard work on the part of the workers at the ADC. All questions should be addressed to Ed Shaya, Chief Scientist NASA/Raytheon ITSS." [cache]
Two demonstrations -- for searching the metadata at ADC using XML DOM and XQL. ADC XQL Query Demo: This is a preliminary look at some of the extra capabilies we can provide once all of our astronomical datasets are converted to our XML format. Although this demonstration lacks a refined interface, it shows that the addition of XML tags can allow quite specific queries to be constructed. The sample database contains approximately 2,400 catalog and journal table documents from the ADC holdings. They were converted to our XML format by a semi-automated process and stored in a binary representation of their XML structure that allows access to every element defined in the DTD."
"XML at the ADC: A Next Generation Data Repository." - American Astronomical Society Meeting #194. By Ed Shaya, James Gass, James Blackwell, Brian Thomas, Brian Holmes (NASA/RITSS); Cynthia Cheung (NASA/GSFC). The staff of the Astronomical Data Center (ADC at GSFC/NASA) is researching the benefits of using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for its repository of published astronomical data. Automated pipelines have been constructed for the flow of data from scientists and/or journal presses into XML documents. Data can be retrieved through the web via a variety of query methods. In the process, an XML software toolbox is in development for the importation, enhancement, and distribution of tabled data and their associated metadata documents. A new data format has been designed that takes full advantage of the XML hierarchical view yet makes maximal use of previously standard keywords and parameters." [cache]
The ADC XML Repository. This Repository stores some '2441 XML documents' [2000-07] describing the data at the ADC.
"Extensible Data Format (XDF)." - NASA ADC.
NOAO Proposal Process Workshop. An XML DTD for telescope observing proposals
