SAMP App Launcher: An On-Demand VO Application Starter by JMMC

摘要

SAMP is the dedicated Virtual Observatory protocol to ensure data exchange between compatible astronomical software running on personal computers. However, one SAMP weakness lies in its requirement to have interoperable applications already running in order to gracefully ensure communication between them. To circumvent this requirement, we present a dedicated application, plus some new SAMP specifications, focused on Java? software available through the Java Web Start application-deployment technology (JNLP) at this stage. JMMC AppLauncher software fakes any described application by registering stub clients on the central SAMP hub. When one of the fake clients is solicited by any third-party software, AppLauncher takes the responsibility to start the true application, and then forwards the waiting SAMP message once fully started. To achieve this, we propose a set of new SAMP key-value pair to hold JNLP URLs. In the future, other kind of software packages technology could also be supported. We also want to standardize this solution, and get one central registry-like interoperable repository of compatible software, in order to open our mechanism to any third-party SAMP application provider. To illustrate, we briefly present our own use case, which demonstrates the need of such a tool for the JMMC applications suite.