[TDA_wg] ** voeventdb **, a new data-service and codebase for VOEvent archiving and search-queries

[Tim Staley]

[TO: IVOA Interop list, IAU Div-B Time Domain WG]

Dear IVOA and Time Domain Astronomy listers,

I'm pleased to announce a new data-service and open-source codebase 
which may be of interest, 'voeventdb', an archive and query-tool for 
working with the VOEvent format (i.e., reporting of astronomical 
transients).

  This codebase comes in two halves:

- voeventdb.server is a database-store and accompanying RESTful query 
API for archiving and retrieving VOEvent packets.
- voeventdb.remote is an accompanying Python client-library for 
end-users (i.e. astronomers).

Key Features:
  - Ready-made Python client-library
  - Spatial filtering
  - Web of citations querying
  - Summary statistics
  - Extensive filters, applicable throughout
  - Full XML storage
  - Loading / dumping of XML packets in plain-old-tarballs

Full details can be found via 
http://voeventdb.readthedocs.org/en/latest/overview/intro.html

You can also test-drive the Python-client library with no local 
installation using an IPython notebook hosted by http://mybinder.org/,
simply browse to
https://github.com/4pisky/voeventdb-dashboard-notebooks
and click on the pink-and-grey 'launch-binder' button.

We are in the process of writing a short 'white-paper' note to announce 
the service to the wider astronomical community via Arxiv. In the 
meantime, we wanted to share the project with this community as the most 
likely early-adopters. Note that this is the first public announcement, 
so we would greatly appreciate any feedback, even if it's just to say 
'it's slow' or 'I can't get it to work because X' (Furthermore, if 
demand is high and performance is poor we could probably move the 
hosting to a larger server, so don't be shy).

Kind regards and happy transient hunting,
Tim Staley (on behalf of the 4PiSky project (http://4pisky.org)).