VOTable multi-dimensional arrays too restrictive

[Dave Morris]

Hi all,

Before we start considering new data types that embed whole JSON or XML 
fragments into fields, perhaps it might be worth considering a string 
data type first.

A real text string data type, a variable length string of UTF8 
characters, would go along way to solve the word list and many other 
text related use cases.

The word list then just becomes an array of strings.

     datatype="text" arraysize="*"

Hope this helps,
-- Dave

--------
Dave Morris
Research Software Engineer
Wide Field Astronomy Unit
Institute for Astronomy
University of Edinburgh
--------

On 2021-02-18 08:26, Markus Demleitner wrote:
> Hi Apps,
> 
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 09:52:17AM -0800, Patrick Dowler wrote:
>> The multi-dimensional array (arraysize="10x*") mechanism is too 
>> restrictive
>> for really common user cases: list of words.
>> 

....
....

> On the other hand, if we start defining syntax, we could of course go
> the postgres way and declare a type json.

....

> Having said that, one can't deny that json-valued cells would solve
> this case (and a lot of others on top) with rather moderate
> implementation cost on the side of the VOTable parser writers, in
> particular if we defined the json to be utf-8-encoded.