Sky Survey Database Design

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Sky Survey Database Design

• National e-Science Centre
• Edinburgh
• 8 April 2003

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Agenda

• 10.00 Start
• Welcome, introductions goals Bob Mann
• Sky survey databases problems
• Introduction Bob Mann
• Recent/current work in Edinburgh Nigel Hambly
• Thoughts on spatial indexing Clive Page, Bob
  Mann
• 12.30 Lunch
• Sky survey databases solutions
• Oracle AstroGrid testbed Ian Carney
• Discussion
• What to do, when and how?
• (15.00 Tea)
• 17.00 Closebeer?

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Meeting goals

• Aid DBMS choice for new Edinburgh databases
• WFCAM VISTA Science Archives (WSA, VSA)
• Use SQL Server, learn about DB2 Oracle
• Investigate possibilities for collaboration in
  areas of mutual interest
• Large, spatial, distributed databases
• DBMS integration into web/Grid service framework

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Why Astronomy Data?
Slide from Jim Gray (Microsoft Research)

• It has no commercial value
• No privacy concerns
• Can freely share results with others
• Great for experimenting with algorithms
• It is real and well documented
• High-dimensional data (with confidence intervals)
• Spatial data
• Temporal data
• Many different instruments from many
• different places and many different times
• Federation is a goal
• The questions are interesting
• How did the universe form?
• There is a lot of it (petabytes)

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Meeting goals (contd)

• Anything else?
• What do our IBM Oracle colleagues want
• from today?
• from interaction with astronomers?