Report of Working Group 4 on Data Structures

J. Gipson1

1NVI Inc/NASA GSFC, USA

Oral

I describe the progress of IVS Working Group 4 on Data Structures, and summarize a draft proposal endorsed by members of the working group.  We propose using a widely available public domain data format, and splitting the VLBI databases into smaller pieces, that can be independently modified and updated.  I discuss some of the advantages of this approach, among them flexibility and extensibility, and the consequences of implementing this proposal on data distribution, archiving and analysis.  I give a timeline for implementation of the proposal.  Lastly, I solicit input from the broad IVS community.