science cases

[Bonnarel]

Discussion started after 2023-11-98 release

[Bonnarel]

It is good to have these ADQL examples. But I think we need a scientific use case associated with these ADQL examples as well. I still think the current set of additional columns is larger than it should be as there is overlap between e.g. the ones that characterize the uv coverage and the ones that characterize the field of view and/or resolution. I think we should drop the ones for which we do not of have a scientific use case (including an ADQL example).

-- MarkKettenis 2023-11-10

[Bonnarel]

I have to say I find the use cases relatively unconvincing because at this point they take some constraints out of thin air and then repeat them three times with slightly differenty syntaxes. That's not very helpful for working out why anything in the extension is the way it is.

I'd find it a lot convincing if the use cases stated a scientifically meaningful discovery problem -- for instance, why would one look for a "dataset with a field of view larger than 0.5 degree"?

Also, at this point I don't believe in any use case involving target_name -- we don't have reliable rules for how to write them (and likely will never have them for "ordinary" objects). Don't fool people into believing they could do all-VO searches using target_name. Convert all of them into positional queries, because that's the only interoperable technique for this kind of thing at this point (but of course it's fine and even welcome to mention object names in the use case formulation).

For solar system objects with their fast-changing positions, the whole problem might pose itself differently, but then that's more epn-tap's problem and arguably doesn't belong here.

Of course, all the queries will have to be re-done if PR #43 is merged, but that's minor, and I'd volunteer. But before such an update, let's have (perhaps fewer but) more meaningful use cases, preferably giving, in sum, justification to each and every column in the extension.

-- MarkusDemleitner 2023-12-11