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### 1.1 What is a table?

In words, STIL's idea of what constitutes a table is something which has the following:

- Some per-table metadata (parameters)
- A number of columns
- Some per-column metadata
- A number of rows, each containing one entry per column

This model is embodied in the `StarTable` interface, which is described in the next section. It maps quite closely, though not exactly, onto the table model embodied in the VOTable definition, which itself owes a certain amount to FITS tables. This is not coincidence.

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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