Tool Interoperability Use Cases

Introduction

At the SC4DEVO meeting in Sydney it was noted that a fairly simple level of interoperability between visualisation tools could be both very beneficial to astronomers and reasonably cheap to implement using the approach used by Noel Winstanley in the AstroGridClient Runtime. The new protocol, tentatively christened PLASTIC (PLatform for AStronomical Tools Inter-Communication), will be implemented by the ACR, but will be open to other implementors.

This page lists some example use cases.

Caveats

They are intended to be illustrations only, and some of the finer details will be down to the implementation in individual tools. These details include:

• How should a tool attach to PLASTIC? Automatically or manually?
• How should a tool determine which events to respond to? Respond to all? Respond only after user authorization? Configure this in tool preferences?

Use Case 1

User opens a VOTable in VisIVO. After choosing some interesting outliers he wishes to view them in Aladin (for example to overlay an image). He starts up Aladin which attaches automcatically to PLASTIC (see caveats above). The VOTable is loaded by Aladin. The user highlights the points of interest in VisIVO and corresponding points are highlighted in Aladin. After some thought the User deselects some of the points in Aladin. The corresponding points are deselected in VisIVO.

Use Case 2

User opens a very large VOTable in Topcat. He uses Topcat's filtering capabilities to select a more manageable subset and then wishes to view the data in VisIVO. As before, both applications are attached to PLASTIC on start up (see caveats above), and the subset is sent to VisIVO.

Nice to have

The following Use Case is given as a "nice to have" feature, since it is believed it could be satisfied with little extra work.

Use Case 3

Our user decides that this dataset is so fascinating he wants to share it with a colleague elsewhere. He emails her the URL of his PLASTIC instance. She opens her copy of Topcat and attaches it to this URL (or...attaches her PLASTIC to his PLASTIC [hmmm...I'm beginning to see the pitfalls of an ill-chosen name] - this would be better for caching if she were then to want to view the data in another tool.) After viewing the VOTable she selects some points of interest, which are then highlighted on the original User's Topcat.

-- JohnTaylor - 06 Sep 2005