VOTable Java Parser

[Markus Dolensky]

"Eric L. Winter" wrote:
>         For informational purposes only, I'd like to ask for an informal
> show of hands from the readers of the VOTable list. How many of you are
> using for your VOTable-related development:
> 
> 1. Java
> 2. Perl
> 3. Something else


Hi Eric,

as a frequent user of Java and Perl let me vote in different terms:

1. Java ...
is preferred when it comes to distribute some VO client software to the
community for VO access . Also, our Sybase DB system at ESO/ST-ECF has
built-in java support. But we haven't decided yet whether we want to
handle VOTable manipulations by the DB internal JVM or not.

2. Perl ...
is the answer for prototyping and for those who love to augment their
existing CGI scripts with new functionality. Since Perl was designed as
a report generator it has a rich set of functions for efficiently
parsing text (XML) files.

3. Neither of both might be the answer when it is a matter of dealing
with very large tables (I assume the same is true for Python). For
instance, C/C++ is likely to be superior in this respect. But
performance is probably not so import in this context and will hardly
justify yet another implementation, especially since large data blocks
will be referenced rather than physically included in a VOTable.

I don't want to compare Perl & Python, but I'd certainly prefer one
decent implementation of an API to two mediocre ones that are
potentially not in sync.

Markus

+---
| Markus Dolensky   Mailto:Markus.Dolensky at stecf.org
| Space Telescope  -  European Coordinating Facility
| Voice: ++49 89 32006/261    Fax: ++49 89 32006/480
| WWW:  http://www.stecf.org/ecf/staff/mdolensk.html
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