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Registry FAQs

To find out more information about NVO registries, check out these FAQs

  • What is a registry?
  • A registry functions as a sort of yellow pages, or high-level directory, of astronomical catalogs, data archives, data-providing organizations, and computational services .  You can search the registry to find data of interest, review the data source descriptions, and in many cases make direct position-based data requests.  

  • What is a resource?
  • A resource is a general term referring to a VO (Virtual Observatory) element that can be described in terms of who curates or maintains it and which can be given a name and a unique identifier. Just about anything can be a resource: it can be an abstract idea, such as sky coverage or an instrumental setup, or it can be fairly concrete, like an organization or a data collection. This definition is consistent with its use in the general Web community as “anything that has an identity” (Berners-Lee 1998, IETF RFC2396). We expand on this definition by saying that it is also describable. There are several types of resources published in the VO registries: standard VO data services (SIAP, Cone, SSAP, and SkyNodes, data collections, organizations, other registries are even considered resources.

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    Sponsored by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement AST0122449 with
    The Johns Hopkins University. Developed in collaboration with the International Virtual Observatory Alliance.

    Last Modified: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 2:33:57 PM by Gretchen Greene
    Revision 1.1