Astronomical tables, 2-D indexing, and fuzzy-joins

Author

Page, Clive G.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys. & Astron., Leicester Univ., UK

fYear

1996

fDate

18-20 Jun 1996

Firstpage

44

Lastpage

52

Abstract

Tabular datasets of up to 10⁹ rows can be produced by high-energy telescopes which return the properties of every detected photon. Catalogues of celestial objects are also simple tabular datasets which are starting to reach comparable sizes and present similar problems. The operations to be performed on such tables can often be described in relational database terms, but in practice special-purpose software is mostly necessary. Some of the problems which arise when handling these tables are discussed in this paper, in particular the need for two-dimensional indexing and the fuzzy join, and some possible solutions are explored

Keywords

astronomy; astronomy computing; collections of physical data; data handling; indexing; relational algebra; relational databases; scientific information systems; very large databases; 2D indexing; astronomical tables; catalogues; fuzzy-joins; high-energy telescopes; relational database; special-purpose software; tabular datasets; two-dimensional indexing; Astronomy; Detectors; Indexing; Object oriented databases; Observatories; Packaging; Physics; Relational databases; Telescopes; USA Councils;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Scientific and Statistical Database Systems, 1996. Proceedings., Eighth International Conference on

Conference_Location

Stockholm

Print_ISBN

0-8186-7264-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SSDM.1996.505914

Filename

505914