VALD3 workshop and VAMDC tutorial

Moscow, 16-20 of April, 2012

Participants: N. Piskunov, T. Ryabchikova, Yu. Pakhomov (Moscow), S. Regandell, Th. Marquart, U. Heiter (Uppsala), M. Doronin (Paris)

The main goal of the workshop was completion of datafiles conversion, software testing and beta-running of complete VALD3 including web interface, EMS, on-line extraction, help and synchronisation system.

In the process we have discovered a number of small bugs, mostly related to data presentation in some of the new formats. All these bugs were fixed and documented in the SVN. All three mirror sites were extensively tested and the conclusion was that VALD3 is ready for beta testers. The list of beta-testers was identified and the routine usage started.

In parallel, a new data dump was created and imported to the VAMDC version of VALD3. In the process, problems were discovered in the term parsing tool, import tool and in the XSAMS generator for the VALD node. The 1st one (missing quantum number information for unknown coupling) was fixed in Moscow and a new dump was created. The import tools and the XSAMS generator were fixed by Regandell and Marquart in Uppsala. The new software was tested in a subset of data and the full import was scheduled to after the end of the workshop.

The intermediate VAMDC version was used in the VAMDC tutorial for Eastern Europe organized by the Institute of Astronomy in Moscow in April 17th, 2012. 18 people took part in the tutorial run by N. Piskunov. They were shown the registration procedure, the functionality of the VAMDC portal, test queries for atomic and molecular data, advanced XSAMS handling tools and a case study "Stellar Spectral Synthesis with VAMDC". In the 2nd half of the day the participants worked with VAMDC themselves repeating some of the demonstration tasks and trying their own queries. The slides from the Tutorial can be found here.

On the 20th of April the decision was made to inform the VALD2 users about the availavility and the access to VALD3.