[fitsbits] INHERIT and Hierarchical Grouping

[William Pence]

Steve Allen wrote:
> My initial impression was that the Hierarchical Grouping Convention
> (HGC) was initially a way of handling interconversions between FITS
> files and HDF files.  That made it seem like "feature envy", and also
> like a solution in search of a problem.

Here's the history as far as I remember it:

The first draft of the grouping convention was written by Don Jennings 
in May 1994, and was designed for use in the HDF <--> FITS data file 
conversion project. The first really major application of the grouping 
convention didn't occur, however, until a few years later when Jennings 
began working for the INTEGRAL Gamma-ray satellite project; The grouping 
convention solved a major problem they had in how to manage the hundreds 
of individual FITS files than could be generated by a single 
observation.  Support for the grouping convention is built into the 
INTEGRAL Data Access Layer software, and the API for creating and 
managing grouping tables (written by Jennings) was added to CFITSIO in 
approximately 1999.

Bill
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence                       pence at milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov
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