Astrogrid DSA/Catalog Component Overview

This component consists of a set of java library jars to help data owners publish their RDBMS catalog data to the International Virtual Observatory.

It currently provides the following IVOA interfaces:

  • CEA - an AstroGrid Common Execution Architecture interface for use by the AstroGrid Job Execution Service. This interface accepts incoming queries in the IVOA's ADQL query language.
  • ConeSearch - An NVO Cone Search, a simple search on sky position. (This interface is optional, and can be disabled in your DSA/catalog configuration.)

The DSA/Catalog component can be configured to connect to any RDBMS system for which a JDBC driver is provided.

It uses an XSLT stylesheet to perform translation from the input ADQL/xml query language to the system-specific SQL required by the RDBMS. Currently, stylesheets are provided for the following systems:

  • MySQL - Open Source SQL database (version 4.1.16)
  • PostgreSQL - Open Source SQL database (version 7.2.3)
  • SQL Server - Microsoft SQL Server (version 8.00)
  • HSQLDB - pure-Java RDBMS (version 1.8.0). For testing purposes or serving small databases based on textfiles.

We welcome community contributions of stylesheets for other RDBMS systems.

The DSA/Catalog component is downloaded as a "web archive" (WAR) file, which should be installed into a tomcat container. By default, it is configured to run against a small sample dataset stored in an embedded HSQLDB RDBMS.

The documents on this website describe how to obtain and install the DSA/Catalog web application. Once installed, the application provides its own documentation explaining how to configure the web application to serve your own data.

You will need to do the following: