tapquery: Queries a Table Access Protocol server
tapquery can query remote databases using the
Table Access Protocol (TAP) services by submitting
Astronomical Data Query Language (ADQL) queries to them and retrieving
the results.
TAP and
ADQL
are Virtual Observatory protocols.
Queries can be submitted in either synchronous or asynchronous mode,
as determined by the sync parameter.
In asynchronous mode, if the query has not been deleted by the time the
command exits (see the delete parameter),
the result can be picked up at a later stage using the
tapresume command.
Table uploads are supported, so it is possible (if the service supports this functionality), to upload a local table to the remote database, perform a query involving it, such as a join with a remote table of some sort, and receive the result. This powerful facility gives you crossmatches between local and remote tables.
For services that require authentication, you will need to supply
your credentials as described in Section 5.4.
Otherwise, queries will be submitted anonymously by default,
but you can force a login attempt to services with optional
authentication by setting auth=true.
This command does not provide any facility for querying the service for either table or capability metadata, so you will need to know about the service capabilities and database structure from some other source (possibly TOPCAT).