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Paper: Indexing and Searching Distributed Astronomical Data Archives
Monograph: 6, Twenty Years of ADASS
Page: 151
Authors:
Abstract: The technology needed to implement a Distributed Astronomical Data Archive (DADA) is available today (e.g., Fulton 1993). Query interface standards are needed, however, before the DADA information will be discoverable. Fortunately, a small number of parameters can describe a large variety of astronomical datasets. One possible set of parameters is (RA, DEC, Wavelength, Time, Intensity) × (Minimum Value, Maximum Value, Resolution, Coverage). These twenty parameters can describe aperture photometry, images, time resolved spectroscopy, etc. These parameters would be used to index each dataset in each catalog. Each catalog would in turn be indexed by the extremum values of the parameters into a catalog of catalogs. Replicating this catalog of catalogs would create a system with no centralized resource to be saturated by multiple users.
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