AstroDAS: Sharing Assertions Across Astronomy Catalogues Through Distributed Annotation

Abstract

Abstract. As diverse scientific data collections migrate online, researchers want the ability to share their assertions regarding the entities that span these disparate databases. We focus on a case study provided by the astronomical community's Virtual Observatory effort to investigate the use of annotation to record and share the celestial object mappings asserted by different research groups. The prototype for our Astronomy Distributed Annotation System (AstroDAS) complements the existing OpenSkyQuery tools for federated database queries, and provides web service methods to allow clients to create and store mapping annotations as relational database tuples on annotation servers. We expect the mechanisms for creating and querying annotations in AstroDAS can be extended to assist with tasks other than entity mapping, in other domains with relational data sources.

Annotation and visualization of endogenous retroviral sequences using the Distributed Annotation System (DAS) and eBioX

“…Both electron microscopy [ 53 ] and protein interaction [ 54 ] groups have committed themselves to develop new extensions recently. Before the 1.53 extension, a group working in the astrophysics field [ 55 ] used DAS to exchange annotations of reference entities such as celestial objects.…”

Integrating sequence and structural biology with DAS

“…A new extension for electron microscopy data has recently been published by Macías et al [ 37 ]. DAS has also received attention beyond the biological community and now even serves as a model in Astrophysics [ 38 ]. DAS has many similarities to webservices that are provided using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).…”

Applying the Virtual Data Provenance Model

“…Future extensions to the virtual data provenance model include maintaining a transactional provenance trail of changes to metadata annotations, studies of scalability, management of provenance data retention, and the application of the model to a distributed web of provenance catalogs employing a similar schema (see, for example, AstroDAS [BMP06]). We are also eager to perform more comprehensive usability experiments with a wide range of users.…”