FITS Java library with WCS routines?

[Petr Kubanek]

Hi everbody,

I'm working on INTEGRAL data VO acceess, using Oracle DB to store image 
metadata and Tomcat on Linux/Solaris as servlet container. I manage to 
write few servlets that offer SIA, VOTable cataloq access and more.

For offering cutout service, I need to transform WCS coordinates to 
pixel coordinates. As far as I have searched:

- there is nom.tam.fits Java package, which offers FITS access (and 
after some patching it even works with INTEGRAL fits, which are huge and 
gzipped). As was noted by Starlink, that library isn't ideal - its 
interface sometimes throw exception and sometimes returns null, so far I 
have searched there is no way how to get if given FITS key exists, etc..

- there is ast package in starlink, which I don't like a lot (JNI, e.g. 
it runs only on Linux & Solaris). And ast is "kind of dinosaurus", which 
offers all posible services (drawing of RA & DEC lines,..) - I don't 
like that, I prefer pure Java library which will do only for which it's 
paid, e.g provide WCS transformations from pixel and to pixel coordinates.

Does anybody of you know about some better implementation of FITS 
library with WCS access? If not, I volunteer to try write such. But I 
don't like idea of reinventing wheel - so if somebody knows about one, 
please let me know.

And second think - I patched a bit Starlink library for VOTable 
generation, so for servlet for access to table I need youst few more 
lines then it's in columns I need to get from DB. Hovewer, I think about 
writing JSP tag library, which will do that. My idea is to write JSP 
page which will look like:

<@vo:table name="xyz">
    <@vo:column name="ra" ucd="pos.equ.ra"/>
    <@vo column name="dec" ucd="pos.equ.dec"/>
....
</vo:table>

which will generate VOTable/HTML table/text file, as will be requested 
in parameters.

Does anybody consider such think?

Regards

Petr Kubanek

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