FITS Java library with WCS routines?

[Tom McGlynn]

The new SkyView Java library described at 
http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/jar.html has
a fairly substantial capability for transforming between world and pixel 
coordinates.
It supports most of the commonly used WCS features, though it is by no 
means complete
(e.g., only about 7 or 8 projections are supported). For a FITS file 
with a given WCS
it's straightforward to get the transformation between pixel and world 
coordinates.
However it's probably harder to adapt to writing the WCS in new FITS 
files.  It uses
the nom.tam.fits library for the actual FITS I/O -- for which someday 
I'd like to
have the time to address the issues you mention below...

The Java class library is available for download and the rather
sparse JavaDocs are on-line.  The source code is certainly available if 
you'd like
that but is not 100% stable.

    Regards,
    Tom McGlynn

Petr Kubanek wrote:

> 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
>