Federating Catalogs and Interfacing Them with Archives: A VO Prototype

A common scientific requirement is to perform a joint query on two or more remote catalogs, then use the resulting combined catalog as input to query an archive or catalog. We have developed techniques which enable the routine federation of several of the largest astrometric and photometric catalogs from either in-house or remote copies, and use this federated output to query the several archives of spectral and imaging data which we either manage or maintain local copies of.

Allowing the federation of arbitrary sections of large catalogs, with user defined match criteria; and then allowing this result to be used to query several large archives of spectral and imaging data (also subject to user constraints) is a key goal of all VO projects. The problems we have solved in developing our methods will also have to be addressed by any VO project which delivers similar capabilities.