Abstract

Inside the Hubble Legacy Archive: AJAX and XSLT and VOTables, Oh My!

Rick White (Space Telescope Science Institute)

The Hubble Legacy Archive relies on a variety of new technologies to create a fast, interactive user interface that runs in a standard web browser and requires no application software installations. It relies on VO protocols for most of its internal communications and services, which makes it relatively easy to extend and to adapt to other projects. A number of our basic tools and scripts have already been adopted for use by other VO projects.

I will describe how the HLA interface was created and how it works on the inside. I will also discuss some challenges and dead ends that we encountered along the way and will speculate about possible future avenues for development of the HLA and other web-based interfaces.

Mode of presentation: oral