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Results of the HTN Workshop

Allan, A.1, Bischoff, K.2, Burgdorf, M.3, Cavanagh, B.4, Christian, D.5, Clay, N.3, Dickens, R.6, Economou, F.4, Fadavi, M.7, Frazer, S.3, Granzer, T.8, Grosvenor, S.9, Hessman, F.10, Jenness, T.4, Koratkar, A.11, Lehner, M.12, Mottram, C.3, Naylor, T.1, Saunders, E.1, Solomos, N.13, Steele, I.3, Tuparev, G.14, White, R.15, Yost, S.16

1 University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom2 Teleskoptechnik Halfmann, Germany3 Liverpool JMU, Liverpool, United Kingdom4 Joint Astronomy Centre, Hilo, Hawaii, U.S.A.5 Queens University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom6 Latterfrosken Software Development, Germany7 Jackson State University, Mississippi, U.S.A8 Astrophsikalisches Institut Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany9 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Centre, Maryland, U.S.A.10 Georg-August-Universitaet, Germany11 University of Maryland Baltimore County, Maryland, U.S.A.12 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, U.S.A.13 Hellenic Naval Academy, Greece14 Tuparev Technologies, Germany15 Los Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico, U.S.A.16 University of Michigan, Michigan, U.S.A.

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What is the HTN?

• The Heterogeneous Telescope Networks Consortium represents a number of major research groups in the field of robotic telescopes. Three primary aims:– Interoperability between robotic telescope

networks– Establishment of an e-market for the exchange of

telescope time– Interoperability with the Virtual Observatory for

event notification• See http://www.telescope-networks.org/wiki/

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Headline results

• Agreed on RTML

• Protocols written and agreed

• Transport mechanisms agreed

• Proceedings published in AN in May 2006, Robert White leading the VOEvent paper, comments to him before the 4th of January (submission deadline)

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Protocols

• Turns out that the protocol is more important than the transport mechanism

• I think this has implications for VOEvent as it is a very similar class of problem

• How are we going to exchange event messages?

EventPublisherClient

EmbeddedAgents

User Agent

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Transport

• Does transport matter?

• Push or pull?– RSS 2.0 for pull– TCP/IP for push?

RFC 1149

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What did they think of VOEvent?

They thought,• It was too complex

They were worried about,• Added latency• The work involved to adopt the standard

But,• They thought the idea of a standard was a good idea

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What does that mean?

• These are both publishers and consumers• This our target audience…• We need to sell it to them• But it’s a sociological problem• We need to address their concerns

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Need to address

• Complexity

• Effort

• Latency