International  Virtual  Observatory  Alliance
 
Documents Process and Matrix
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The table below lists all the published IVOA documents, showing their level in the standardization process. Here is a summary of the document promotion process as described in IVOA Document Standards recommendation.

  1. Working Group prepares Working Draft (version ≥1.0) and submits to Document Coordinator for posting in the IVOA document collection.
  2. Working Group reviews the Working Draft. Two reference implementations of any associated software are recommended.
  3. The Chair of the Working Group, with consent of the WG, promotes the document to a Proposed Recommendation and submits it to the Document Coordinator for posting in the IVOA document collection.
  4. The Chair of the Working Group issues a formal Request for Comments (RFC) to the e-mail distribution list interop@ivoa.net. The RFC and all comments must be logged on a TWiki page whose URL is given in the RFC. A minimum comment period of 4 weeks must be allowed.
  5. The Working Group Chair responds to comments on the TWiki page. If comments lead to significant changes to the document, the status reverts to Working Draft (back to Step 1).
  6. If comments are addressed to the satisfaction of the WG Chair and WG members, the WG Chair requests the IVOA Chair to submit it to the Executive Committee for approval.
  7. The Executive Committee is polled by the IVOA Chair to ascertain if there is consensus for promotion to Recommendation.
  8. If yes, the IVOA Chair reports on approval to the WG Chair and asks the Document Coordinator to update the document status to Recommendation. If no, the concerns of the IVOA Executive need to be resolved and a new poll taken, or if serious revisions are required, the document would revert to Step 1.
  9. The IVOA Executive may propose to the IAU Commission 5 that IVOA Recommendations be endorsed as IAU Standards.
More info about the Standard Document Process can be found in the Guidelines and Procedures for IVOA Document Standards Management note.

Each document has two status lines:

The "Group" column indicates the Working Group reponsible for it (see the legenda for the full name).

The version ("ver.") column indicates the number of the version, if present.

Documents are listed in alphabetical order: to see a representation based on the status - along with submission details - please visit the latest page.

Clicking on any of the status icons will open the relevant document in a separate window.


D o c u m e n t S t a t u s
Group Name Short Description WD PR Rc ver. RFC
VQL Astronomical Data Query Language Describes the Astronomical Data Query Language (ADQL) and its string representation, ADQL/s.     1.01 RFC
       
SDP Document Standards Types of official IVOA documents and the process by which documents are advanced from Working Drafts to formal Recommendations.     1.00  
       
ReR Identifiers Describes the syntax for IVOA identifiers (globally unique name for a resource) as well as how they are created.     1.11 RFC
       
semantics Maintenance of the list of UCD words Describes the procedure to maintain the standard list of UCD1+ words.     1.20 RFC
       
ReR Resource Metadata Suggests an architecture for resource and service metadata and describes the relationship of this architecture to emerging Web Services standards. An initial set of metadata concepts is also defined.     1.01 RFC
    1.10
DAL Simple Image Access Protocol (SIAP) Defines a prototype standard for retrieving image data from a variety of astronomical image repositories through a uniform interface.     1.00  
       
GWS Single-Sign-On Profile: Authentication Mechanisms Approved client-server authentication mechanisms are described for the IVOA single-sign-on profile.     1.00  
       
VQL SkyNode Interface Describes the minimum required interface to participate in the IVOA as a queryable VONode as well as requirements to be a Full OpenSkyNode, part of the OpenSkyQuery Portal.     1.01 RFC
       
DaM STC Metadata Provides a complete design description of the Space-Time Coordinate (STC) metadata for the Virtual Observatory.     1.21 RFC
       
semantics UCD1+ Describes the current understanding of the IVOA controlled vocabulary for describing astronomical data quantities, called Unified Content Descriptor (UCD).     1.10 RFC
       
semantics UCD1+ controlled vocabulary Describes the list of controlled terms used to build the Unified Content Descriptors, Version 1+ (UCD1+).     1.11 RFC
       
VOE VOEvent A standard information packet for representing, transmitting, publishing and archiving the discovery of transient celestial events.     1.11 RFC
       
ReR VOResource: XML Encoding Schema Describes an XML encoding standard for IVOA Resource Metadata, referred to as VOResource. This schema is primarily intended to support interoperable registries used for discovering resources.     1.01  
       
VOT VOTable Describes the VOTable format, an XML standard for the interchange of data represented as a set of tables.     1.10 RFC
       

DALData Access Layer WG
DaMData Modeling WG
GWSGrid & Web Services WG
ReRResource Registry WG
SDPStandards & Documents Process WG
semanticsSemantics WG
VOEVO Event WG
VOTVOTable WG
VQLVO Query Language WG
n.a.not applicable




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