XAssist

A form to allow the pipeline data to be searched and to submit requests for fields to be processed will be available shortly.  Send field processing requests and questions in general to ptak-at-pha.jhu.edu.

Note that there are links within the pipeline reports for downloading spectra, responses, etc. for detected sources, and the easiest way to download images is to use the web services client.   Run "python xarpc.py download" for options.  For example,

python xarpc.py download xmm 0505211001 mos1 image

python xarpc.py download chandra 4935 acis image

 Plans

Our current plan is to add more user functionality through both "web services" and web applications.  The distinction is that web applications are the usual dynamic web functionality (shopping carts, forms to request processing or download data, etc) that users run simply from a web browser.  Web services are essentially function libraries that can be called over the web, with the classic example being retrieving highly dynamic data such as the temperature for a given location and news headlines.  Portals (igoogle, my.yahoo.com, etc.) are traditional examples of web applications that consume web services.  The functionality we are planning to expose is:

• A common interface with WESIX to allow a given X-ray or optical image to be submitted and analyzed using SExtractor
• Access to low-level XAssist routines to allow source detection, spectral extraction and response generation to be run on a given region and field with the user's specifications
• A true "queue" for users to request processing of a given field.

We are also planning on having a "watch" service that allows users to enter a list of positions and radii, and then XAssist will continuously check for new public X-ray data that may cover those positions and add them to a queue.