There were three main themes addressed by the Action: * Data centres and data curation for the Data Grid, including metadata operability standards, textual summarization, and user profiling. * Visualization, including display, data fusion and data mining. * Multimedia data handling, including multiband and hyper spectral data analysis. COST 283 had very extensive linkages with national projects and other international projects (NVO in the US, RVO in Russia, etc.). The plate digitization work has been a unique contribution to these virtual observatory and data grid activities. This Action was a bridge between middleware and related system activities; and application specialists. There has been extensive work (funded nationally or through FP6) in the former area. This Action provided very productive linkages between computer software infrastructure and high level applications, which were not provided by other means. It can be noted that the middleware and related system activities were sometimes led by Action 283 members (in the cases of UK, F, IRL, D, for example). This Action contributed significantly to further both the data Grid and the virtual observatory (leading to the generic, virtual organisation) tools and technology developments. In specific advanced conceptual and methodological development – advanced algorithm development – (cf. areas mentioned above under 9.2), significant progress was achieved, as witnessed by the number and quality of publications stemming from the Action. A number of spin-off projects (at FP6 and national level) were generated. Some results (eg. the plate digitization work) can be considered as a direct impact of the Action as they would probably not have been obtained without this Action.
