- WebSampConnector -
Stay tuned in to the VO
DEPRECATED
prefer the use of JSAMP or sampjs, see SAMP softwares
Applet last version: 1.6 / 2011-05-12
Presentation
The WebSampConnector is a client toolkit that enables Web page based astronomy service
to interoperate and communicate with
VO softwares
(no more save and load or cut and paste into the VO world!). It is based on the technology of the middleware previously
developed by
I. Zolotukhin & I. Chilingarian.
The WebSampConnector is a faceless Java applet built upon the
JSAMP implementation of the
SAMP messaging protocol.
It can act both as a sender and a recipient, respectively, to send notification patterns
toward the VO softwares, and to receive notification patterns coming from VO softwares.
The messages are delivered to and received from clients which subscribe any MType, and in
particular the following application MTypes:
- table.load.votable
- Loads a table in VOTable format.
- image.load.fits
- Loads a 2-dimensional FITS image.
- table.load.fits
- Loads a table in FITS format.
- spectrum.load.ssa-generic
- Loads a spectrum or SED built by the Simple Spectral Access protocol.
- coord.pointAt.sky
- Directs attention to a given point on the celestial sphere.
- table.highlight.row
- Highlights a single row of an identified table by row index.
- table.select.rowList
- Selects a list of rows of an identified table by row index.
The WebSampConnector implements also some of the hub administrative messages to manage the
connection of the Web page with the Samp hub. See the documentation for more information
about the use of the WebSampConnector.
The WebSampConnector project is managed using the Launchpad
software collaboration platform. Please report bugs and future requirements on the dedicated pages of
the VO-PDC WebSampConnector Launchpad. If
you are interested to be involved in the project, register you on the Launchpad Web site and
send us a request.
Demonstrator
To discover the capabilities of the WebSampConnector, test our
demonstrator.
You will be able to broadcast a VOTable, a FITS image and a SSA spectrum from the Web page to
VO softwares. You will also be able to handle events (point at sky, highlight row and a set of
rows) between the Web page and the softwares.
Before starting the demo, we recommend to launch the following softwares:
- JSamp
- to view the connected clients, their capabilities and the broadcasted messages
- Aladin
- to view tabular data and FITS images
- Topcat
- to view and edit tabular data
- Splat-VO
- to view and manipulate spectra
To run the demo, follow the steps and click on the hyperlink which are proposed. If you do
not want to launch all the softwares, run at least one of them and start its internal Samp hub.
You will then only be able to discover the capabilities provided by the software.
Documentation
The documentation of the WebSampConnector is composed of a
User's guide
which detailed how to set up and use it, and of the
Javadoc which
described in detail the Java methods of the applet.
Refer to the SampInfo web page
and to the SampStandard web page to get
more information about SAMP and its architecture.
Go to the SampSoftwares
web page to get a list of the softwares which are known to use the SAMP protocol.
Download
You can download the WebSampConnector toolkit, demonstrator and sources from
this page, or from the
VO-PDC portal.
Credit
The WebSampConnector has been designed and developed by the
VO-Paris Data Centre
team, in particular by J. Berthier, R. Savalle and J. Normand. We strongly thank I. Chilingarian and I. Zolotukhin
for the
middleware on which the WebSampConnector
is based, and A. Tregoubenko for its valuable help and its huge contribution in the writting of the WebSampConnector
code.
If you deploy the VO-PDC WebSampConnector in your Web application, we would be grateful to you to add
a link in your Web page towards the Web site of the WebSampConnector:
<a href="http://vo.imcce.fr/webservices/wsc/">WebSampConnector Web site</a>
If the WebSampConnector was helpful for your research work, the following acknowledgment would be appreciated:
"This research has made use of VO-Paris Data Centre's WebSampConnector toolkit."
This work could not have existed without the IVOA and, in particular, the work
of the Applications Working Group.
Known issues
The WebSampConnecter applet is embeded in the
HTML
<object> tag and has been tested and (almost) validated on the major Web browsers:
Nevertheless, it exists some cases where all the functionalities of the WebSampConnector applet
do not correctly run:
- Firefox
- - nothing to report
- Microsoft Internet Explorer
- - nothing to report
- Opera
- - On some Linux computers using pre-10.50 version, Opera has irresolvable issues with Java
(slowness, raised exceptions).
- Chrome
- - nothing to report
- Safari
- - not yet fully validated. More tests are needed.
We are still working to fix these issues.