The Virtual Observatory Registry

TL;DR

The paper details the development and standardization of the Virtual Observatory Registry system, which enables resource discovery and management for astronomical data and services, highlighting server-side standards and practices.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the server-side standards, resource record formats, harvesting processes, and identifier management in the VO Registry system.

Findings

Standardization of registry server components

Guidelines for resource record creation and management

Discussion of open issues and usage patterns

Abstract

In the Virtual Observatory (VO), the Registry provides the mechanism with which users and applications discover and select resources -- typically, data and services -- that are relevant for a particular scientific problem. Even though the VO adopted technologies in particular from the bibliographic community where available, building the Registry system involved a major standardisation effort, involving about a dozen interdependent standard texts. This paper discusses the server-side aspects of the standards and their application, as regards the functional components (registries), the resource records in both format and content, the exchange of resource records between registries (harvesting), as well as the creation and management of the identifiers used in the system based on the notion of authorities. Registry record authors, registry operators or even advanced users thus receive a big picture serving as a guideline through the body of relevant standard texts. To complete this picture, we also mention common usage patterns and open issues as appropriate.