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## 7 VOTable Access

VOTable is an XML-based format for storage and transmission of tabular data, endorsed by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, who make available the schema (http://www.ivoa.net/xml/VOTable/v1.1) and documentation (http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/VOT.html). The current version of STIL provides full support for versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and (draft) 1.4 of the format.

As with the other handlers tabular data can be read from and written to VOTable documents using the generic facilities described in Section 3. However if you know you're going to be dealing with VOTables the VOTable-specific parts of the library can be used on their own; this may be more convenient and it also allows access to some features specific to VOTables.

The VOTable functionality is provided in the package `uk.ac.starlink.votable`. It has the following features:

- Reads all VOTable data formats (TABLEDATA/FITS/BINARY)
- Writes all VOTable data formats
- Full access to document structure as a DOM
- Full handling of array types
- Flexible table output
- Hybrid (SAX/DOM) parsing for memory & CPU efficiency
- Large table access (not limited by memory)
- Fast
- Resolution of relative URLs
- Sequential/random access to tabular data
- Best efforts parsing of non-conforming documents
- Optional disk-based caching of table data when read

Most of these are described in subsequent sections.

- 7.1 StarTable Representation of VOTables

- 7.1.1 Structure
- 7.1.2 Parameters
- 7.1.3 Column Metadata
- 7.1.4 Data Types

- 7.2 DATA Element Serialization Formats
- 7.3 Reading VOTables

- 7.3.1 Generic VOTable Read
- 7.3.2 Table-Aware DOM Processing
- 7.3.3 Table-Aware SAX Processing
- 7.3.4 Standards Conformance

- 7.4 Writing VOTables

- 7.4.1 Generic table output
- 7.4.2 Single VOTable output
- 7.4.3 TABLE element output
- 7.4.4 VOTable Version

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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