Instructions for catalogue data submission

The Phase 3 process for catalogues is based on the same tools and concepts as the submission and release of other data products types. The Release Manager allows the PI to define data collections and releases, to manage Phase 3 delegation to co-investigators and, finally, to 'close' the submission.

The ESO Phase 3 User Guide, which documents the usage of the Release Manager in a step-by-step fashion, generally applies to catalogue data submission. The following section illustrates the implementation of the Phase 3 concepts of data collection and data release with regard to science catalogue data and provides specific guidelines.

Phase 3 data collection and release

Each catalogue is represented by one and only one Phase 3 data collection. Therefore, for each new catalogue to be submitted, a dedicated Phase 3 data collection must be defined using the Phase 3 Release Manager. In this step, the data provider is prompted to enter name and title of the data collection, which refers to the catalogue in this case (Figure 1).

Subsequent submissions extending or revising an existing catalogue need to be submitted as a further data release to the same data collection to ensure consistent management of versions including the proper automatic tagging.

Catalogue name

The catalogue name is identical to the Phase 3 data collection name. This name is a string identifier, which must be defined as Phase 3 data collection name by the data provider before starting the first data submission. This determines the corresponding directory on the Phase 3 FTP server where the data then need to be transferred to. The name cannot be modified later. The catalogue name is used to define catalogue data links (see, e.g., §4.2.2.1, Data Products Standard, Issue 3).

The catalogue name is a character string composed of upper-case letters (A–Z), digits (0–9), and the underscore (‘_’, decimal 95, hexadecimal 5F) character. Spaces are not allowed. The string should have between 5 and 20 characters. Specifically, the string shall match the (Perl) regular expression: ^[A-Z_][A-Z0-9_]{4,19}$. This constraint is validated by the system when a new Phase 3 data collection is created using the Release Manager.

Because the catalogue/collection name is employed as unique identifier in the context of the Phase 3 system, not just in the context of your Phase 3 programme, names should be sufficiently specific. Therefore, for instance, the name VIDEO_CDFS_CAT should be preferred over just CDFS_CAT. It is generally a good idea to prepend the catalogue/collection name with the (abbreviated) programme name.

Subsequent versions of a given catalogue share the same name, i.e. the combination of catalogue name and catalogue version number (see below) uniquely identifies each catalogue instance stored in the ESO archive. For this reason the catalogue name, and Phase 3 data collection name in general, should not contain a number indicating its version. See Table 1 for examples.

Catalogue Title

The catalogue title is identical to the Phase 3 data collection title. Analogous to the name, the title for the Phase 3 data collection is defined by the data provider before starting the first data submission.

The title allows for a brief significant text description of the content with a maximum length of 68 characters. It is used for display purposes in the context of the entire ESO Science Archive, not just in the context of your Phase 3 programme. Subsequent versions of a given catalogue/collection share the same title (as well as the name). Therefore, the Phase 3 catalogue/collection title should not contain any number indicating the data release version either. The Phase 3 support scientist (ESO/ASG) may modify the PI-provided title of a Phase 3 data collection/catalogue with regard to the overall alignment across the ESO Science Archive.

Catalogue Release number

The catalogue release number is identical to the Phase 3 data release number, sometimes also referred to as “release tag”. The Phase 3 Release Manager automatically generates this index, numbering subsequent versions of the catalogue/data collection, when the Phase 3 user creates a new data release.

The catalogue release number is required to define catalogues data links (§4.2.2.1, Data Products Standard, Issue 3).

Table 1: Overview of Phase 3 catalogue data deliveries for the first submission of catalogues (June 2012) from the ESO/VISTA public survey programmes

Table 2: Overview of Phase 3 catalogue data deliveries for the first submission of catalogues (June 2013) from the ESO spectroscopic public survey programmes