Welcome to the EURO-VO Full Harvestable VO Resource Registry
The Euro-VO Registry offers you the following main functionalities:
For astronomers and end users: Search the VO resources through the Simple Search Panel, the Advanced Search or through the expert ADQL Search Panel.
For data publishers: Host your resources with the Euro-VO Registry, create and update your own VO Resources via a password-protected interface, check their compliance with the associated IVOA standards.
In the Euro-VO Registry, there are three tools targeted for use by astronomers: Simple Search, Advanced Search, and ADQL Search.
Simple search
Using the search view, you can find any VO resource of interest. For example, write “Gaia” in the search box and press the search button to see all resources containing anything related to Gaia. If you are only interested in one particular type of resource (TAP, SIAP, Cone Search, etc.), you can refine your search by using the appropriate resource type button (“All TAP,” ”All SIAP,” “All Cone Search”) instead of the search button. For example, writing the word “Gaia” in the search box and clicking the “All TAP” button gives you all TAP resources containing the word “Gaia” in the resource information. You can refine your search by writing multiple keywords in the search box.
For example, by writing “parsec sample in the Gaia era” and pressing the search button, we search for all resources containing ALL these words. If you instead want to search for all resources containing ANY of the words, select “Any Term” instead of “All Terms” in the dropdown menu to the right of the search box.
Finally, if you only want data from one or a selection of the “Managed Authorities,” you can choose that by clicking the “Select” button. A “Managed Authority” identifies the different institutions that host resources.
Advanced search
You have even more options to find what you want in the Advanced Search view. Use the input fields to create a set of conditions for your search. By using the “Satisfies from the below criteria” dropdown, you can choose whether the search results have to match all your set conditions or if it is enough to satisfy just one. As in the Simple Search view, you can write multiple keywords in a text box to search for resources containing any or all of the input keywords. Whether to find resources containing All or Any keywords is decided by the selection in the All/Any dropdown beside the text box.
The above image shows a search for Cone Search resources with titles containing either “Gaia” or “Tycho” in the title, “proper” and “motion” in the description, and a compliance rating of B or better.
ADQL Search
In the ADQL Search view, you can browse the Euro VO Registry database yourself using ADQL. Here you find the public database tables containing all important information regarding each VO Resource.
You can see the name of the available tables in the panel to the left. You can also view the table column names by clicking any of the table names. You may also notice that when you click a table name or column name, the corresponding ADQL to get all column or table data is produced into the ADQL text panel. By utilizing all mentioned information, a creative mind can develop many ADQL queries to extract exciting information. For example, to find all Cone Search Services providing a column with redshifts, use the following ADQL:
SELECT ivoid, access_url
FROM rr.capability a
NATURAL JOIN rr.table_column b
NATURAL JOIN rr.interface c
WHERE a.standard_id='ivo://ivoa.net/std/conesearch'
AND c.intf_type='vs:paramhttp'
AND b.ucd='src.redshift'
A set of examples can be found in the dropdown menu at the top. Selecting any of these examples will produce the corresponding ADQL in the ADQL text panel. Just press “Search” and enjoy the resulting table below.
Overview
To get your data into the VO ecosystem, you need to do two things:
Create a VO Resource for your data and
Make your data findable by registering your resource in a Registry like the Euro-VO Registry
Doing this will make your data accessible through your VO Resource and an extensive array of VO client applications.
To create a VO Resource, refer to the IVOA instructions, which details several ways of creating a VO Resource around your data. Once you have created the VO Resource, come back here to complete the VO integration of your data by validating that your VO Resource is behaving correctly before registering the Resource in the Euro-VO Registry.
Validation of VO Resources
Once you have a VO Resource, it is good practice to make sure that it is behaving properly before registering it in the Euro-VO Registry. The Euro-VO Standalone Validation view and REST API exist to help you do just that.
Standalone Validation of a registered resource
In the standalone validation view, you first use the dropdown menu to select the appropriate service type of the resource you want to validate. Then write the URL of the resource and press “Add Job” and then “Run” and “OK.” When the validation has finished, you can see which compliance score your resource has received and why. Clicking any of the rows in the bottom table will provide more information on what was tested and more details in case of a failed test.
For MOC validation, you can paste an URL (just like with the other validators) to a FITS MOC or upload a FITS MOC file from your machine to validate.
REST API - Test a VO resource before registering it
As of release 3.1 of the Euro-VO Registry, you can validate your resources via the REST API. For example, accessing the following URL will give you an XML with the validation result for the ESASky TAP: https://registry.euro-vo.org/evor/eurovoweb/validation?type=TAP1.1&url=https://sky.esa.int/esasky-tap/tap Customise your REST request by changing the type to one of the following SCS, SIA1.0, SIA2.0, SSA, TAP1.0, TAP1.1, MOC, and URL parameter to the URL of your resource.
The Simple Cone Search, Simple Image Access Specification, and Simple Spectral Access Protocol use validators developed by the Euro-VO team, while the TAP and MOC validators use TAPLint (STILTS v3.4.7, developed by Mark Taylor) and MOCLint (developed by CDS)
Register Resource
To manage and create VO Resources, log in with a “Managed Authority” account. The login and registration process is handled by the CAS Cosmos system, which means that you will use the same account for all ESA services. If you don’t have a Cosmos account, you can register using the "Create Account" functionality in the top right. Once logged in, you can upgrade your account to a "Managed Authority" account by pressing the "Become A Publisher of VO data" button. When logged in with a managed authority account, you will see a “My Resources” button in the left side menu.
Here, there are currently two ways to register VO resources in the Euro-VO Registry:
(1) the simplified way of using the Wizard Form
(2) uploading an XML containing the resource information using the format described in this IVOA document.
If you've never created an XML for a VO Resource, use the Wizard Form, which helps you create an XML for your resource. The Wizard Form is especially handy if your service has a VOSI interface because the Euro-VO Registry can fetch most of the required information from your service. You can later edit the resulting XML or use it as a base for your next VO Resource.
However, if you know what you know how to create a VO Resource XML, choose Option 2 instead, as it provides more flexibility and options for how to expose your service to the VO ecosystem.
Either way, an XML file is stored in the Euro-VO Registry, which you can later edit as described in the Manage Your VO Resources section below.
Upon resource creation, the Euro-VO Registry also fetches the latest metadata from your resource's VOSI interface, if there is one. By default, the Euro-VO Registry will read your service's VOSI every few months and update your resource accordingly, if anything has changed. You can opt out of this periodic update of your resource by unchecking the "Automatic Update" checkbox in the "Edit Resource" view (see Manage Your VOResources)
Manage your VO Resources
In the “My Resources” view, you get an overview of your previously published VO resources and inspect and edit any of the values for your resource. You can also see each resource's compliance status, i.e., how well it follows its corresponding IVOA standard. To see more information, edit a resource, or see details regarding the compliance score, click the magnifying glass on the row for the resource and choose one of the tabs, “Summary,” “Edit Resource,” or “Validation.”
For example, to edit your resource information, just update the XML information within the “Edit Resource” tab and press the save button. Refer to this IVOA document for more information on how to write valid XML input for your resource.
The Euro-VO Registry is part of the IVOA Registry ecosystem. It provides a mechanism for VO applications to discover and select resources relevant to a particular scientific problem. The VO specification defines the operation of this system, and is based on a general, distributed model composed of searchable and publishing registries. This page describes the programmatic interfaces to query the Euro-VO Registry (Registry TAP interface, Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) interface, and standard IVOA Registry Interface).
This REST interface is available on the base URL: https://registry.euro-vo.org/regtap/tap
The RegTAP (Registry Table Access Protocol) interface follows the IVOA Registry Relational Schema and piggybacks on the more generic Table Access Protocol specification (TAP). This means you can access the data just like any other TAP server. Below are some examples, but refer to the TAP document above to discover the complete set of capabilities.
There are several ways to use the RegTAP interface:
Using TOPCAT, you may find the functionality to execute TAP-based queries against a selected registry under VO -> Table Access Protocol:
... and then select the ESAVO TAP in the list or enter the base URL given above in teh TAP URL text box. See the screenshot below:
To learn more about accessing the RegTAP interface and dedicated software libraries, please check the IVOA Wiki pages.
Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) Interface
This REST interface is accessible via software or your browser.
The VO community chose the OAI-PMH standard for metadata harvesting because of its proven track record within the library community..
The OAI-PMH end-point has the following base URL: https://registry.euro-vo.org/oai.jsp (the above is the base URL and thus, cannot be directly used which is why it is not clickable).
There are 6 calls you can make to the OAI-PMH interface: Identify, ListSets, ListMetadataFormats, GetRecord, ListIdentifiers,and ListRecords.
ListSets Returns a list of set names supported by the registry that harvesters can request in order to get back a subset of the descriptions held by the registry. No other parameter allowed. Example: https://registry.euro-vo.org/oai.jsp?verb=ListSets
GetRecord Returns a single resource description matching a given identifier. Required parameters: identifier - See description above metadataPrefix - either “ivo_vor” or “oai_dc”. “ivo_vor” is a short name for IVOA VO Resource, and is most likely the value you would like to use. “oai_dc” is the OAI Dublin Core format, which is defined by the OAI-PMH base standard must be supported by all OAI-PMH compliant registries. Example: https://registry.euro-vo.org/oai.jsp?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=ivo_vor&identifier=ivo://esavo/esasky/tap
ListIdentifiers Returns a list of identifiers for the resource records held by the registry, possibly restricted to records changed within a certain time span or to those belonging to a certain set. Required parameter: metadataPrefix - See above description Optional parameters: from - Datestamps in the OAI-PMH 2.0 standard are encoded using ISO8601 and expressed in UTC, with the UTC designator “Z” appended to seconds-based granularity where supplied, i.e. YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ until - Same as from parameter set - Use the ListSets call to see what values are supported. Currently, “ivo_managed” is the accepable value. Example: https://registry.euro-vo.org/oai.jsp?verb=ListIdentifiers&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&set=ivo_managed
ListRecords Returns complete resource records in the registry, possibly restricted to records changed within a certain time span or to those belonging to a certain set. Required parameter: metadataPrefix - See above description Optional parameters: from - Datestamps in the OAI-PMH 2.0 standard are encoded using ISO8601 and expressed in UTC, with the UTC designator “Z” appended to seconds-based granularity where supplied, i.e. YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ until - Same as from parameter set - Use the ListSets call to see what values are supported. Currently, “ivo_managed” is the accepable value. Example: https://registry.euro-vo.org/oai.jsp?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=ivo_vor&from=2023-02-05T21%3A13%3A59Z&until=2023-02-25T17%3A49%3A38Z&set=ivo_managed
The Registry Interface v1 was unpublished after the IVOA meeting in May 2023. This IVOA standard has been "deprecated for future developments" since 2014. Therefore, we encourage you to use the two options described above instead.
IMPORTANT: The Euro-VO Registry will be down from April 18, 2024, 17:30 CEST until April 23, 2024, 08:30 CEST. Following building major renovation work at ESAC, we will be moving our data centre containing all our IT hardware infrastructure. We understand the inconvenience this may cause and sincerely apologize for this downtime. We’ve taken this opportunity to improve our data centre infrastructure to significantly increase its reliability and its energy efficiency. Our teams will be working hard to resume all our services as soon as possible, once the move is complete.
rr.capability
ivoid
