RE: [alma-sw-ssr] Offline Requirements v3.1

["Tim Cornwell" <tcornwel@nrao.edu>]

Interoperability between packages has been talked about at ADASS for
a number of years (>5) with no substantial advances for the major
packages. It's a hard problem, made more so by data formats (it's
easy to agree cross package on images but not on visibility datasets)
and technology (e.g. many people argue that CORBA is too heavy weight
for what we need to do). 

I'd recommend adding interoperability as a desired but not essential
feature, but I bet that the costs will rule it out.

Exporting data to another package is much simpler but is covered
already by the requirement to write FITS.

Tim
 
> What I am suggesting is that the efficiently coded, radio-astronomy
> specific algorithms could be provided with clean interfaces for
> use (perhaps as externally called routines) from other packages
> which the user might prefer to use. As Mark notes, using aips++
> these algorithms are  "well-integrated with the data", but the
> IR astronomer may wish to work in a more familiar environment,
> better suited to data from some other instrument.