We decided initially on a minimum set of source and field parameters which are general enough to be of interest to the average end user; i.e. we decided to flag the most important quantities such as source position, source intensity, the presence of strong diffuse emission in the field, etc, while leaving alone parameters of lesser interest (e.g.. hardness ratio). It was decided early in the project to use logical flags, rather than status indicators. That means each flag has only two states: TRUE or FALSE. Since these flags are meant to serve as an alert to the user, the default for all flags is FALSE. Suspicious parameters are marked by setting the appropriate flag to TRUE. This system makes sense since it is easier to tell which parameters should be suspect as opposed to attempting to determine which parameters are correct. For example, it is a fairly easy task to alert a user to the fact that a source is contained within an extended emission region, and therefore its intensity is suspect; but there is no easy way to determine whether the count rate derived by SASS is in fact correct or not. Users of a tabulated list of sources generally do not view the source in its actual cosmic environment so that without such flags users could easily place unwarranted trust in the tabulated entries.
The Quality flags serve many functions. They serve as guides for views of the database: e.g. normally, users will not want to retrieve entries that have been identified as ``false detections''. The flags will also alert users to certain situations about the environment since users may not always have access to the image. The primary installation of the RRA will be in the HEASARC BROWSE environment, a well-known interface which allows easy searching for sources and filtering on source flags.