2. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 1 VO-enabling xmdv-lite John Taylor Institute for Astronomy Edinburgh

3. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 2 xmdv-what? A general multi-dimensional visualization tool from Matthew Ward's group at WPI Not astro-specific “lite” Java version Uses parallel axes, scatterplots etc to help you get a grip on mind-bendingly high-D datasets

4. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 3 xmdv-why? Why would you use it? Parallel axes feature good for spotting patterns Java Web Startable – click 'n' go Lightweight Integrated with the Euro-VO infrastructure via the ACR See its big brother

5. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 4 xmdv-where? “VO-enabled” version launched by Java Web Start from http://software.astrogrid.org/votech/ds6/xmdv/ Get xmdv-heavy from http://davis.wpi.edu/%7Exmdv/ List of non-astro viz tools at: http://wiki.eurovotech.org/bin/view/VOTech/DS6SoftwareSurvey

6. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 5 DEMO

7. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 6 Lessons... Connecting to the Euro-VO via the ACR is laughably easy....5 lines of code to access VOSpace (for Java apps) Java Web Start makes delivering your app easy (even if it contains native code) & provides a convenient way of launching the ACR Need to find a way of working with tool providers to ship astro-specific code in their products.

8. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 7 Interop with other Tools PLASTIC – a specification to allow visualization tools to talk to each other Contributing software: Aladin, Topcat, VisIVO, ACR.... Contributing wetware: Mark Taylor, Thomas Boch, Sebastien Derriere, Pierre Fernique, Noel Winstanley, Claudio Gheller, Marco Comparato, Bob Mann....

9. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 8 Enhancing Viz Tools Mostly done by aggregation e.g. Plugins Some move towards cooperation e.g. VisIVO => Aladin

10. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 9 Equal but different...? VisIVO Topcat Aladin xmdv- heavy RVS PlasticHub xml-rpc rmi aladin scripting

11. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 10 It's intended to be easy... Each tool need only speak one language (xml-rpc, java-rmi, CORBA (maybe), http)... The interface the tool has to implement is very simple Only specified the minimum to make it work, leaving most decisions in the hands of the tool writers Plastic says nothing about the sorts of messages tools can send each other....future-proof. Initial set of defined messages inspired by the Aladin plugin interface.

12. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 11 Now we're getting silly... VisIVO Topcat Aladin PlasticHub VisIVO User1 User2 Python IDL R

13. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 12 Demo.... See me afterwards...

14. xmdv-lite October 6, 2005 Slide 13 Contact John Taylor jdt@roe.ac.uk Skype: johndavidtaylor http://wiki.eurovotech.org/bin/view/VOTech/DsSixPlasticInterface