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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, ECSV, Parquet, MRT, CDF, Feather, 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). It supports table-aware SAX- or DOM-mode processing and 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 Note252
STIL web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stil/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk