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STILTS provides a number of command-line applications which can
be used for manipulating tabular data.
Conceptually it sits between, and uses many of the same classes as,
the packages
STIL,
which is a set of Java APIs providing table-related functionality, and
TOPCAT,
which is a graphical application providing the user with
an interactive platform for exploring one or more tables.
This document is mostly self-contained - it covers some of the
same ground as the STIL and TOPCAT user documents
(SUN/252 and SUN/253 respectively).
Currently, this package consists of the following commands for generic
table manipulation:
-
tcopy
:
Table Format Converter
-
tpipe
:
Generic Table Pipeline Utility
-
tmatch2
:
Pair Crossmatcher
-
tcat
:
Table Concatenater
-
tcube
:
N-dimensional Histogram Calculator
the following commands specifically for operating on VOTable files:
-
votcopy
:
VOTable Encoding Translator
-
votlint
:
VOTable Validity Checker
the following commands for accessing VO services:
and the following general purpose utility:
More tools may be introduced in the future.
There are many ways you might want to use these tools;
here are a few possibilities:
-
In conjunction with TOPCAT
- you can identify a set of processing steps using TOPCAT's interactive
graphical facilities, and construct a script using the commands
provided here which can perform the same steps on many
similar tables without further user intervention.
-
Format conversion
- If you have a separate table processing engine and you want to
be able to output the results in a somewhat different form,
for instance converting it from FITS to VOTable or from
TABLEDATA-encoded to BINARY-encoded VOTable, or to perform
some more scientifically substantial operation such as
changing units or coordinate systems, substituting bad values etc,
you can pass the results through one of the tools here.
Since on the whole operation is streaming, such conversion can
easily and efficiently be done on the fly.
-
Server-side operations
- The tools provided here are suitable for use on servers, either
to generate files as part of a web service (perhaps along the
lines of the Format conversion item above)
or as configurable components in a server-based workflow system.
-
Quick look
- You might want to examine the metadata, or a few rows,
or a statistical summary of a table
without having to load the whole thing into TOPCAT or some other
table viewer application.
Next Previous Up Contents
Next: The stilts command
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Previous: Abstract
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