Previous: Table handling
Up: Aspects of a simple-minded ARCQUERY session
Next: Exit procedure
Previous Page: Table handling
Next Page: Exit procedure

Requests

In order to submit a request to the archive manager for the release of observations (section ), just type:

REQUEST/OUTPUT_TYPE=FITS , or e.g. :

REQUEST/INP=3B/OUTPUT_TYPE=FITS

The latter form specifies the query table, just in case one is not sure about the default. The REQUEST command sends your request to the manager (it will be queued); you will be asked to provide any comment which might be relevant for your request; for instance, you might like to receive the data on either a DAT or EXABYTE tape. Protected data (the proprietary period is one year) will only be released with explicit consent of the original principal investigator. The command

SHOW REQUEST = *

will display the status of any outstanding request(s) of this user (queued, granted, executed or rejected). Note that an outstanding request can be cancelled by the user at any time before excution; see section for details. The ARCQUERY software will return an E-mail message after a request has been processed.

When submitting a request for data, it may be of interest to consider the order in which the observations appear in the table; the data are de-archived in precisely that order and thus appear in that order on the FITS tape. If the table was obtained after many selections and table-handling operations, the observations can really get scrambled. Therefore, it can be a good idea to sort (section ) the table before submitting the request. A sort on the keywords DATE, TIME, and possibly FITSTAPE will do nicely, e.g. :

SORT/INP=3A/OUT=4 FITSTAPE,DATE,TIME