A User-Centered Data Base for Astronomy
by John Roll (1995),
presented at the Fifth Annual Conference on Astronomical Data Analysis
Software and Systems, published in Astronomical Data Analysis Software
and Systems V, A.S.P. Conference Series, Vol. 101, 1996, George H.
Jacoby and Jeannette Barnes, eds., p. 536.
A User-Centered Data Base for Astronomy
John Roll
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Data base management is an increasingly important part of astronomical data
analysis. Astronomers need easy and convenient ways of storing, editing,
filtering, and retrieving data about data. Commercial data bases do not
provide good solutions for many of the everyday and informal types of data
base access that are performed by astronomers. An ASCII data base system with
simple data file formatting rules and command line data operators has been
created to answer this need. The system includes a complete set of relational
and set operators, fast search/index and sorting operators and many formatting
and i/o operators. Specific features are included to enhance the usefulness
of the database when manipulating astronomical data. The software runs under
UNIX, MSDOS and IRAF as an external package.
[WCSTools]
[WCSTools paper]