VOSpace user guide

The initial idea from which we started was to provide users with a tool to be able to easily recover their data previously stored into a tape library. The project structure then evolved into something more complex and led to the development of a VOSpace implementation compliant with the IVOA VOSpace specification[1]. The current VOSpace allows users to store and retrieve data using local, hot and cold storage points: • a local storage point stores data uploaded through the VOSpace User Interface • hot and cold storage points store data uploaded asynchronously using a transfer node. Both local and hot storage points rely on the Lustre[2] parallel file system. Retrieving data from a local storage point is immediate since users just have to launch a download, so this operation is synchronous. Conversely, data stored into hot or cold storage points must be retrieved asynchronously. More precisely, the VOSpace creates symbolic links to make data available from hot storage points. In this way there is no need to perform a copy. Data stored into cold storage points (e.g. a tape library), instead, must be recalled. This report describes all the operations and the functionalities of the current INAF VOSpace implementation from the user point of view

Aided generation of search interfaces to astronomical archives

Astrophysical data provider organizations that host web based interfaces to provide access to data resources have to cope with possible changes in data management that imply partial rewrites of web applications. To avoid doing this manually it was decided to develop a dynamically configurable Java EE web application that can set itself up reading needed information from configuration files. Specification of what information the astronomical archive database has to expose is managed using the TAP SCHEMA schema from the IVOA TAP recommendation, that can be edited using a graphical interface. When configuration steps are done the tool will build a war file to allow easy deployment of the application. <P /

VOSpace administrator guide

In this technical report we want to describe the underlying architecture of the INAF VOSpace from the system administrator point of view

Prototype LBT/LUCI ObsCore table

This document presents the first prototype of an IVOA compliant ObsCore table of proper raw data from LBT/LUCI to be published and shared among the astronomical community through both the Table Access Protocol (TAP-1.x) and the Simple Image Access Protocol version 2 (SIAP-2.0)

Big Data Analytics on Large-Scale Scientific Datasets in the INDIGO-DataCloud Project

In the context of the EU H2020 INDIGO-DataCloud project several use case on large scale scientfic data analysis regarding different research communities have been implemented. All of them require the availability of large amount of data related to either output of imulations or observed data from sensors and need scientic (big) data solutions to run data analysis experiments. More specically,the paper presents the case studies related to the following research communities: (i) the European Multidisciplinary Seaoor and water column Observatory (INGV-EMSO), (ii) the Large Binocular Tele-scope, (iii) LifeWatch, and (iv) the European Network for Earth System Modelling (ENES).EGI Foundation, IBM ResearchPublishedUniversity of Siena, Palazzo del Rettorato, Banchi di Sotto, 55, 53100 Siena (SI), Italy1VV. Altr

Radio data archiving system

Radio Astronomical Data models are becoming very complex since the huge possible range of instrumental configurations available with the modern Radio Telescopes. What in the past was the last frontiers of data formats in terms of efficiency and flexibility is now evolving with new strategies and methodologies enabling the persistence of a very complex, hierarchical and multi-purpose information. Such an evolution of data models and data formats require new data archiving techniques in order to guarantee data preservation following the directives of Open Archival Information System and the International Virtual Observatory Alliance for data sharing and publication. Currently, various formats (FITS, MBFITS, VLBI's XML description files and ancillary files) of data acquired with the Medicina and Noto Radio Telescopes can be stored and handled by a common Radio Archive, that is planned to be released to the (inter)national community by the end of 2016. This state-of-the-art archiving system for radio astronomical data aims at delegating as much as possible to the software setting how and where the descriptors (metadata) are saved, while the users perform user-friendly queries translated by the web interface into complex interrogations on the database to retrieve data. In such a way, the Archive is ready to be Virtual Observatory compliant and as much as possible user-friendly

A public data archive for the Italian radio telescopes

The amount of data delivered by modern instrumentation and observing techniques is bringing radio astronomy in the era of Big Data, and the nowadays widely adopted Open Data policies allow free and open access to data from many radio astronomy facilities. A fundamental ingredient to enable Open Science in the radio astronomical community and to engage also public participation (the so called Citizen Science) is thus the availability of public archives in which data can be accessed and searched with modern software tools. A web-based, VO-compliant public archive has been built to host data from the Italian radio telescopes managed by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). The archive main features consist in the capability to handle the various types of data coming from the different observing instrumentation at the telescopes; the adoption of a policy to guarantee the data proprietary period; the accessibility of data through a web interface and the adoption of VO standards to allow for successful scientific exploitation of the archive itself in the data mining era. We present the progress status of the public Data Archive for the Italian radio telescopes being developed to provide the international community with a state-of-the-art archive for radio astronomical data

The Central Scientific Unit VIII - ”Computing”

The optimization of the execution times of data analysis and theoretical simulation codes, combined with the ability to manage large amounts of data, and with the energy efficiency of all processes, are decisive ingredients for the success of large research projects in astrophysics. On the other hand, the new opportunities provided by computer science developments will also significantly change the "modus operandi" of many researchers. The creation of USC VIII, dedicated to high-performance computing and data archiving, therefore represents an invaluable opportunity to support INAF members and projects in the highly competitive current research landscape and in what will mature over the next decades. The presentation describes the context, the organizational methods, the short and medium term objectives, the available and planned resources of the newborn USC VIII, which also includes almost all the activities (for example cloud, networks, GARR, software licenses, and services research commons such as gitlab, etc.) previously conducted by the so-called INAF ICT. Emphasis is also given to collaborations with other organizations and above all with industries. The presentation also wants to represent an opportunity to stimulate dialogue and the sharing of experiences in the field of computing, archives, services and IT developments: an opportunity to receive suggestions from the community, to gather information about any problems in this sector which exist in any specific INAF headquarters, and to start the assembly of a list of the local expertise to be exploited in the creation of the INAF computing ecosystem

KAFE: the Key-analysis Automated FITS-images Explorer

We present KAFE—the Key-analysis Automated FITS-images Explorer. KAFE is a web-based FITS image postprocessing analysis tool designed to be applicable in the radio to sub-mm wavelength domain. KAFE was developed to complement selected FITS files with metadata based on a uniform image analysis approach as well as to provide advanced image diagnostic plots. It is ideally suited for data mining purposes and multiwavelength/multi-instrument data samples that require uniform data diagnostic criteria. We present the code structure and interface, the keyword definitions, the products generated for selected users’ science cases, and application examples