Re: [TASS] publication of variable stars

[Chris Albertson <calbertson@LOGICON.COM>]

mgutzwiller@LANVISION.COM wrote:

>
> I will take it upon myself to design and publish for comment a series of
> tables for addition to the TASS database.  I know I could add my own tables
> but I'd like to have some consensus from both the users and designers
> present and add the tables to the official TASS database.


The hard part isn't designing the tables.  It is getting data into the tables.
The even harder part is keeping the data correct, complete, not duplicated and
so on.

The worst case would be a new table open to the world were people use the raw
SQL "insert" command to put stars into the table.  It is pretty clear what would
happen after a few thousand entries were made this way.  The process that we use
to populate the table should have traceability built in.  For both science and
our credability as a group we should be able to answer the question "how did
that
star get into this table?"  For example every point
in the tass catalog can be traced back to the FITS image it came from.  This
allows
a processing error (messed up flat) to be backed out of the TASS database.

One suggestion:  Maybe we use a "promotion" process.  Stars move from "suspect"
variables to "candidates", then finally become "TASS Variables".  Whenever a
star
is promoted we can record when, by who, and the criteria for promotion.
This way data
is never entered directly into the "TASS Variables".  It must first move through
some multi-step process with some kind of quality check at each step and we
record
enough information that we can back out mistakes.


  Chris Albertson

  calbertson@logicon.com                  Voice: 626-351-0089  X127
  Logicon, Pasadena California            Fax:   626-351-0699