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This section lists the output modes which can be used as
the value of the omode
parameter of
tpipe
and other commands.
Typically, having produced a result table by pipeline processing
an input one, you will write it out by specifying
omode=out
(or not using the omode
parameter at all -
out
is the default). However, you can do other things
such as calculate statistics, display metadata, etc. In some of
these cases, additional parameters are required. The different
output modes are listed below.
-
mode=cgi
-
Writes a table to standard output in a way suitable for
use as output from a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) program.
This is very much like
out
mode
but a short CGI header giving the MIME Content-Type
is prepended to the output.
Additional parameters for this output mode are:
-
ofmt = <out-format>
- Specifies the format in which the output table will be written
(one of the ones in Section 4.2 - matching is
case-insensitive and you can use just the first few letters).
[Default:
votable
]
-
mode=count
-
Counts the number of rows and columns and writes the result to standard output.
-
mode=discard
-
Reads all the data in the table in sequential mode
and discards it.
May be useful in conjunction with the
assert
filter.
-
mode=meta
-
Prints the table metadata to standard output.
The name and type etc of each column is tabulated,
and table parameters are also shown.
See the
meta
filter in Section 5.1
for more flexible output of table metadata.
-
mode=out
-
Writes a new table.
Additional parameters for this output mode are:
-
out = <out-table>
- The location of the output table. This is usually a filename
to write to.
If it is equal to the special value "-" (the default)
the output table will be written to standard output.
[Default:
-
]
-
ofmt = <out-format>
- Specifies the format in which the output table will be written
(one of the ones in Section 4.2 - matching is
case-insensitive and you can use just the first few letters).
If it has the special value
"
(auto)
"
(the default),
then the output filename will be
examined to try to guess what sort of file is required
usually by looking at the extension.
If it's not obvious from the filename what output format is
intended, an error will result.
[Default: (auto)
]
-
mode=plastic
-
Broadcasts the table to any registered Plastic-aware
applications. PLASTIC, the PLatform for AStronomical
Tool InterConnection, is a tool interoperability protocol.
A Plastic hub must be running in order for this to work.
Additional parameters for this output mode are:
-
transport = string|file
- Determines the method (PLASTIC message) used
to perform the PLASTIC communication. The choices are
-
string
:
VOTable serialized as a string and passed as a call parameter
(ivo://votech.org/votable/load
).
Not suitable for very large files.
-
file
:
VOTable written to a temporary file and the filename passed as
a call parameter
(ivo://votech.org/votable/loadFromURL
).
The file ought to be deleted once it has been loaded.
Not suitable for inter-machine communication.
If no value is set (null
) then a decision will
be taken based on the apparent size of the table.
-
client = <app-name>
- Gives the name of a PLASTIC listener application which is to
receive the broadcast table.
If a non-null value is given, then only the first registered
application which reports its application name as that value
will receive the message. If no value is supplied, the
broadcast will be to all listening applications.
-
mode=stats
-
Calculates and displays univariate statistics for each
of the numeric columns in the table.
Mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum and number of
good rows are shown.
-
mode=topcat
-
Displays the output table directly in
TOPCAT.
If a TOPCAT instance (version 1.6 or later) is already
running on the local host, the table will be opened in
that, otherwise a new TOPCAT instance will be launched
for display.
The latter mode only works if the TOPCAT classes are
on the class path.
A variety of mechanisms (e.g. PLASTIC and SOAP) are
attempted to transfer the table, depending on what
running instances of TOPCAT can be found.
Depending on the transport mechanism used,
there may be limits to the size of table
that can be transmitted to the application in this way.
-
mode=tosql
-
Writes a new table to an SQL database.
You need the appropriate JDBC drivers and
-Djdcb.drivers
set as usual
(see Section 3.4).
Additional parameters for this output mode are:
-
protocol = <jdbc-protocol>
- The driver-specific sub-protocol specifier for the JDBC
connection.
For MySQL's Connector/J driver, this is
mysql
,
and for PostgreSQL's driver it is postgres
.
For other drivers, you may have to consult the driver
documentation.
-
host = <value>
- The host which is acting as a database server.
[Default:
localhost
]
-
database = <db-name>
- The name of the database on the server into which the
new table will be written.
-
newtable = <table-name>
- The name of the new table which will be written to the
database.
If a table by this name already exists, it may be overwritten.
-
user = <username>
- User name for the SQL connection to the database.
[Default:
mbt
]
-
password = <passwd>
- Password for the SQL connection to the database.
Next Previous Up Contents
Next: Crossmatching
Up: Table Pipelines
Previous: Specifying a list of columns
STILTS - Starlink Tables Infrastructure Library Tool Set
Starlink User Note
256
STILTS web page:
http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stilts/
Author email:
m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk