Virtual Observatory (VO) is a collection of interoperating data archives and software tools. Taking advantages of the latest information technologies, it aims to provide a data-intensively online research environment for astronomers all around the world. A large number of high-qualified astronomical software packages and libraries are powerful and easy of use, and have been widely used by astronomers for many years. Integrating those toolkits into the VO system is a necessary and important task for the VO developers.

VO architecture greatly depends on Grid and Web services, consequently the general VO integration route is “Java Ready – Grid Ready – VO Ready”. In the paper, we discuss the importance of VO integration for existing toolkits and discuss the possible solutions. We introduce two efforts in the field from China-VO project, “gImageMagick” and ” Galactic abundance gradients statistical research under grid environment”. We also discuss what additional work should be done to convert Grid service to VO service.

Virtual Observatory (VO) is the result of combination of Astronomy and the latest information technologies. VO is driven by astronomical research and education, but is enabled by the latest technical progresses, especially those in computer science and network.

One of the final goals of different VO projects from different countries and regions is to setup an International Virtual Observatory (IVO). While, the basic aim of the IVO is to provide uniform resource access to its users. The resources provided by the IVO are all kinds of resources related to astronomical research, education and outreach, including but not limited to observational and simulating data, astronomical literatures, software tools, data storage space, computing power, network bandwidth, and even astronomical telescopes and other instruments.

At the early stage of VO research and development, interconnection and interoperation among different datasets and different VO projects are primary goals. Every year, International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) will arrange two specific meetings on interoperation.

Although all kinds of astronomical data, for example sky survey data productions, personal observations and simulation results, are important resources for the IVO, software tools to process and analyze these data are also key components, or even more important parts. Extensively applications are key criteria to judge whether the IVO is successful.

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