Miguel Albrecht (ESO), Francois Ochsenbein (CDS, Strasburg), Allan Brighton (ESO), Pierre Fernique (CDS, Strasburg), Markus Dolensky (ESO/ST-ECF), Andreas Wicenec (ESO)
The astronomical community has often profited from re-use of software. Whether or not related to astronomy, many libraries, modules or software fragments proved to be useful by either being embeddable into other people's code or by simply serving as templates for solutions. We also know, that re-using other people's software is not always as easy as one might wish - the technology may not fit, functions may fall short of what is needed.
Even though this situations has not substantially changed over the last two decades - not even with the advent of object oriented languages like C++, we believe that something fundamental is changing now, with the spread of Java. The software industry at large is showing us the path: the bean framework is already now delivering a huge amount of reusable components, they share a common interface and can be integrated into entirely different development environments. At the same time XML (EXtensible Markup Language) data description is boosting the interchange of data structures and a new generation of browsers and Java-based applications will probably re-draw the face we know today of the web.
We have written a framework proposal (http://archive.eso.org/JSky) aimed at sharing java components in astronomy. Practically speaking, we would agree on a set of definitions of what makes a JSky Component and the interfaces that they use to communicate e.g. XML DTD's (Document Type Definitions). The components "basket" would be replicated web sites with a common repository structure.
A first set of components and class libraries are presented. They address the need for accessing data and catalog servers and understanding and handling tabular and image data types. See also the presentation by Ochsenbein et al. on "Using XML for accessing resources in astronomy".
A community wide JSky initiative will be discussed at the JSky BOF.