Science With the Virtual Observatory 2005 Summer School

NVO Summer School 2005 Software

• Overview
• Configuring your laptop
• Software package contents
• Known issues
• Useful links

Overview

Welcome to the software page for the 2005 NVO Summer School.

Making sure that your laptop is correctly configured for a workshop or summer school is often a real hassle so we've tried to make it as easy as possible for you. We have already bundled up all the applications and development software you will require for the summer school so a basic setup just consists of making sure that two system components (Java 1.4 and MySQL - the most popular open source database) are in place and then installing our software package (running one script). That's it - you ready to go and maybe you might even want to try out a few things before coming to Aspen.

Hold on, I didn't realise that I would have to know Java! You don't - although Java 1.4 is the default language for our exercises and examples (so you'll need to have done the basic setup to be able to follow these), we are also providing support (including sample code and some exercises) for C#, IDL, IRAF, Perl, PHP and Python. If one of these is more your cup of tea, then you just need to make sure that your system setup is OK and then install our software package.

Configuring your laptop

• Instructions for Linux users
• Instructions for Mac users
• Instructions for Windows users

Software package contents

The 2005 NVO Summer School software package contains:

Development software

• Apache Tomcat 5.0.28

  - a Java web servlet container

• Apache Axis 1.2 Beta

  - a Java web services container (version 1.2.1 Final is also provided for those who want to use Java 1.5)

• Apache Ant 1.6.5

  - a Java-based software build tool

VO applications

• Topcat 1.6
• VOPlot 1.2.1
• VOPlot3D 1.0
• VO-enabled Mirage 0.3
• Aladin 3.0.28

NVOSS material

• All the code for the exercises

• Sample data sets

• Example VO web service client and server code in the supported languages

Known issues

The version of ant that comes with Linux operating systems based on Fedora Core 4 and Redhat Enterprise 3 builds its classpath dynamically at runtime and this is mixing environment variable settings causing ant to fail. To fix this, you need to create a file in your home directory: ~/.ant/ant.conf containing the following:

#
# ant.conf (Ant 1.6.x)
# JPackage Project 
#

# Validate --noconfig setting in case being invoked
# from pre Ant 1.6.x environment
if [ -z "$no_config" ] ; then
   no_config=true
fi

# Setup ant configuration
if $no_config ; then
   # Disable RPM layout
   rpm_mode=false
else
   # Use RPM layout
   #rpm_mode=true
   rpm_mode=false

   # ANT_HOME for rpm layout
   #ANT_HOME=/usr/share/ant
   ANT_HOME=$NVOSS_HOME/java/apache-ant-1.6.5
fi

Useful links

Organizations

• NVO
• IVOA
• Astrogrid
• Euro-VO

Portals

• OpenSkyQuery
• Spectral Browser
• DataScope
• Registry
• Wesix

Downloadable VO applications

• SpecView

  - a visualization and analysis tool for 1-D astronomical spectra

• Carnivore

  - an open source VO registry

The NVO Summer School is made possible through the support of the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.