VOApplication xs va This is a schema for describing applications.. See complete specification at http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/VOApplication.html. The basic description of an application. an indication as to what the cost of the application is - the string "free" or "none" should be used to indicate that the application does not cost anything. Any value for the cost of any non-free software should be taken to be an approximate cost for one license - it is obviously difficult to curate this value for non-free software so that the main use of this element will be to distinguish between free and non-free. A free text value that indicates what type of licence is in force. This can either be a common name of a license or a URL pointing to the license text. Is the software open source. See http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php for the definition of "open source" File formats that this application can read or write. The formats are specified by reference to an IVOA identifier that describes the format. enumerate which standards this application is compliant with - *Editor note* not really too happy with this, as there is a certain amount of potential redundancy here if there is a derived type - e.g. a CeaApplication type will support CEA standard so at least one entry would have to be placed here... The IVOA identifier for the principal language that the application is written in. The location where the source code can be found. This might be a URL to a specific archive file containing the source, or to the access pages for a source code management system. An application that can actually be run on a user's desktop computer. The size of the executable in bytes. An estimate in bytes of the mimimum memory that the application requires to function with acceptable interactive performance. An assertion about the network requirements for the proper functioning of the application. This can take on the values;

Essential

The application will not even start without a network connection.

Useful

The application will start, but the primary use for the application requires a network connection.

Limited

The application makes only limited use of network facilities, thus the majority of its functionality is still available without a network connection.

Unnecessary

The application makes no use of the network.

Can be used to indicate other applications/software libraries that the application depends upon. This should only be used to indicate dependencies that must be installed separately from the main application installation for it to function properly. how to obtain the executable Software the cannot be independently executed, but can be used to build applications Description of the full execution environment. Where possible this description should be sufficient to download and run the application. The major classification of the execution environment. This should be an ivoa identifier for the platform name; The hardware architecture that the software is compiled for, if relevant. this is used to specify exactly the specific kind of the environment - e.g. in the case of unix/linux it would be nice if the output of uname would suffice here - however the most common the minimum version of the environment that the code will run in - The highest version of the environment that this applies to. The url that can be used to download (and possibly execute) the application. This can actually point to different types of entity depending on the platform e.g. for the "unix" platform this would typically point to a compiled executable image (though it might point to an archive or "packaging" file that contains the executable amongst other files). For the "Java Webstart" platform this element will point to a ".jnlp" file that contains all of the information necessary for the Java Webstart technology to download and run the application. If the software image is packaged within some form of archive format (e.g. tar or zip format) then this element can be used to indicate the exact location of the software image within the archive file. Data File Format. This should be a uri reference to a value from the ivo://net.ivoa.application/formats resource. Editor note - it would really be nice to have a connection with mime-types here rather/as well as the standard reference mechanism The programming language. This should be a uri reference to a value from the ivo://net.ivoa.application/languages resource. The execution environment name. This should be a uri reference to a value from the ivo://net.ivoa.application/platforms resource. generic description of a capability of an application - this is different from a service capability because it does not have an interface associated - perhaps should be derived from a common base class though. Characterization as to whether a network connection is required by the application. The application cannot function without a network connection The application will function without a network connection, but the primary use for the application requires a network connection. The application makes only limited use of network facilities, thus the majority of its functionality is still available without a network connection. The application makes no use of the network. Description of whether an application can both read and write a particular data format.