[fitswcs] [Fwd: FITS Java library with WCS routines?]

[William Pence]

Readers of this fitswcs listserver might be interested in a related thread 
of messages that were posted on the Virtual Observatory 'apps' listserver 
last week concerning the need for a WCS library written in Java.  I've 
attached the first of these messages below.  The subsequent messages (5 so 
far) can be viewed by going to http://ivoa.net/forum/apps/ and then clicking 
on the messages in the 03 Nov 2005 and later time period.

Bill Pence

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: FITS Java library with WCS routines?
Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 23:32:22 +0100
From: Petr Kubanek <Petr.Kubanek at obs.unige.ch>
Reply-To: apps at ivoa.net
To: apps at ivoa.net

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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