ObsCore update discussion : adding Axes information in Obscore table

[Mark Taylor]

On Mon, 27 Apr 2015, Markus Demleitner wrote:

> Now, I admit introducing a second table to obscore is a bit drastic,
> and opposition to that would be well justified. Which brings us back
> to the options for denormalization considered in the mail referenced
> above.
> 
> Arrays (one each for axis type and axis length) would be almost ideal
> here, but I don't think we can really formally introduce array
> processing in ADQL.  Can we?

I will just note here that from the output point of view this would
not be problematic: VOTables are, like FITS, quite happy with
array-valued columns.  But I'm not making any comment on the
impact that the introduction of array processing would have on
the rest of the TAP/ADQL standards and implementation stack.

--
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-9288776  http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/