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Abstract

STIL is a set of Java class libraries which allow input, manipulation and output of tabular data and metadata. Among its key features are support for many tabular formats (including VOTable, FITS, text-based formats and SQL databases) and support for dealing with very large tables in limited memory.

As well as an abstract and format-independent definition of what constitutes a table, and an extensible framework for "pull-model" table processing, it provides a number of format-specific handlers which know how to serialize/deserialize tables. The framework for interaction between the core table manipulation facilities and the format-specific handlers is open and pluggable, so that handlers for new formats can easily be added, programmatically or at run-time.

The VOTable handling in particular is provided by classes which perform efficient XML parsing and can read and write VOTables in any of the defined formats (TABLEDATA, BINARY or FITS); at time of writing it is believed to be the only library to offer this. It may be used on its own for VOTable I/O without much reference to the format-independent parts of the library.


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STIL - Starlink Tables Infrastructure Library
Starlink User Note 252
STIL web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stil/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk
Starlink: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/