Subject: NASA is looking at Space Sciences Data Formats

From: Tom McGlynn <tam at silk.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1999 10:05:46 -0400

FITS users,

There is an effort underway to understand and rationalize
the use of data formats within the NASA space sciences
community.  I've appended a notice of this effort below.
The hope is to involve as many people in this
as possible.  NASA's astronomy data is now largely provided
in FITS and, while there are no current plans for this to change,
the scope of this review includes astronomy data.

Please feel free to join the discussion at the site described
below.

		Regards,
		Tom McGlynn
		NASA/HEASARC

Data Formats: A Community Alert

        The Space Science community currently expends considerable
resources maintaining and evolving a wide variety of data formats.  A
combination of internal and external pressures make it unlikely that NASA
will support all the currently existing formats into the future.  A group
of concerned individuals who represent format developers, researchers,
project data managers, archive managers, and commercial tool vendors have
initiated a Format Evolution Process (FEP) and have convened an FEP
Committee, hosted by the NASA/Science Office of Standards and Technology.
During the next few weeks, you have an opportunity to join this process and
express your views before the shakedown begins. Working together, we can
ensure that the formats we find most useful will survive and evolve. 

        You can find a more detailed statement concerning our goals on the
WWW at http://ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/nost/fep/.  The dialogue is organized
into discussion forums focussed on various types of users, format
developers, and tool developers.  An easy to use WWW form interface allows
you to express your opinions concerning the various formats you have used
and the functionalities you wish formats and their supporting software had.
Completed forms are posted on the WWW for others to read and comment on
via a web- based e-mail service which allows participants to follow
sequential threads of comments.  There is also a forum on the potential
impacts of new standards and technologies on the formats.  Participants are
encouraged to submit white papers on relevant topics or provide pointers to
such white papers. 

        We expect the web site to evolve into a NASA-wide resource for
information on formats and support services.  Once sufficient material has
been submitted, we plan to convene a meeting of interested contributers to
draft consensus documents guiding future data format evolution.  If you
use, store, provide, or manipulate data, you should begin participating in
this dialogue now.