Ubuntu Manpage: stilts-cdsskymatch - Crossmatches table on sky position against VizieR/SIMBAD table

NAME

       stilts-cdsskymatch - Crossmatches table on sky position against VizieR/SIMBAD table

SYNOPSIS

       stilts cdsskymatch [ifmt=<in-format>] [istream=true|false] [in=<table>] [icmd=<cmds>] [ocmd=<cmds>]
                          [omode=out|meta|stats|count|cgi|discard|topcat|samp|tosql|gui] [out=<out-table>]
                          [ofmt=<out-format>] [ra=<expr>] [dec=<expr>] [radius=<value/arcsec>]
                          [cdstable=<value>] [find=all|best|best-remote|each|each-dist] [blocksize=<int-value>]
                          [maxrec=<int-value>] [compress=true|false] [serviceurl=<url-value>]
                          [usemoc=true|false] [presort=true|false] [fixcols=none|dups|all] [suffixin=<label>]
                          [suffixremote=<label>]

DESCRIPTION

cdsskymatch uses the CDS X-Match service to join a local table to one of the tables hosted by the Centre
de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. This includes all of the VizieR tables and the SIMBAD database.
The service is very fast, and in most cases it is the best way to match a local table against a large
external table hosted by a service. It is almost certainly much better than using coneskymatch, though it
is less flexible than TAP (see the tapquery task for flexible access to TAP services, and tapskymatch for
positional matches).

The local table is uploaded to the X-Match service in chunks, and the matches for each chunk are
retrieved in turn and eventually stitched together to form the final result. The tool only uploads sky
position and an identifier for each row of the input table, but all columns of the input table are
reinstated in the result for reference.

The remote table in most cases contains only a subset of the the columns in the relevant VizieR table,
including the most useful ones. The service currently provides no straightforward way to acquire columns
which are not returned by default.

Acknowledgement: CDS note that if the use of the X-Match service is useful to your research, they would
appreciate the following acknowledgement: "This research made use of the cross-match service provided by
CDS, Strasbourg."

OPTIONS

ifmt=<in-format>
Specifies the format of the input table as specified by parameter in. The known formats are listed
in SUN/256. This flag can be used if you know what format your table is in. If it has the special
value (auto) (the default), then an attempt will be made to detect the format of the table
automatically. This cannot always be done correctly however, in which case the program will exit
with an error explaining which formats were attempted.

istream=true|false
If set true, the input table specified by the in parameter will be read as a stream. It is
necessary to give the ifmt parameter in this case. Depending on the required operations and
processing mode, this may cause the read to fail (sometimes it is necessary to read the table more
than once). It is not normally necessary to set this flag; in most cases the data will be streamed
automatically if that is the best thing to do. However it can sometimes result in less resource
usage when processing large files in certain formats (such as VOTable).

in=<table>
The location of the input table. This may take one of the following forms:

* A filename.

* A URL.

* The special value "-", meaning standard input. In this case the input format must be given
explicitly using the ifmt parameter. Note that not all formats can be streamed in this way.

* A system command line with either a "<" character at the start, or a "|" character at the end
("<syscmd" or "syscmd|"). This executes the given pipeline and reads from its standard output.
This will probably only work on unix-like systems.
In any case, compressed data in one of the supported compression formats (gzip, Unix compress or
bzip2) will be decompressed transparently.

icmd=<cmds>
Specifies processing to be performed on the input table as specified by parameter in, before any
other processing has taken place. The value of this parameter is one or more of the filter
commands described in SUN/256. If more than one is given, they must be separated by semicolon
characters (";"). This parameter can be repeated multiple times on the same command line to build
up a list of processing steps. The sequence of commands given in this way defines the processing
pipeline which is performed on the table.

Commands may alteratively be supplied in an external file, by using the indirection character '@'.
Thus a value of "@filename" causes the file filename to be read for a list of filter commands to
execute. The commands in the file may be separated by newline characters and/or semicolons, and
lines which are blank or which start with a '#' character are ignored.

ocmd=<cmds>
Specifies processing to be performed on the output table, after all other processing has taken
place. The value of this parameter is one or more of the filter commands described in SUN/256. If
more than one is given, they must be separated by semicolon characters (";"). This parameter can
be repeated multiple times on the same command line to build up a list of processing steps. The
sequence of commands given in this way defines the processing pipeline which is performed on the
table.

omode=out|meta|stats|count|cgi|discard|topcat|samp|tosql|gui
The mode in which the result table will be output. The default mode is out, which means that the
result will be written as a new table to disk or elsewhere, as determined by the out and ofmt
parameters. However, there are other possibilities, which correspond to uses to which a table can
be put other than outputting it, such as displaying metadata, calculating statistics, or
populating a table in an SQL database. For some values of this parameter, additional parameters
(<mode-args>) are required to determine the exact behaviour.

Possible values are

* out

* meta

* stats

* count

* cgi

* discard

* topcat

* samp

* tosql

* gui
Use the help=omode flag or see SUN/256 for more information.

out=<out-table>
The location of the output table. This is usually a filename to write to. If it is equal to the
special value "-" (the default) the output table will be written to standard output.

This parameter must only be given if omode has its default value of "out".

ofmt=<out-format>
Specifies the format in which the output table will be written (one of the ones in SUN/256 -
matching is case-insensitive and you can use just the first few letters). If it has the special
value "(auto)" (the default), then the output filename will be examined to try to guess what sort
of file is required usually by looking at the extension. If it's not obvious from the filename
what output format is intended, an error will result.

This parameter must only be given if omode has its default value of "out".

ra=<expr>
Right ascension in degrees in the ICRS coordinate system for the position of each row of the input
table. This may simply be a column name, or it may be an algebraic expression calculated from
columns as explained in SUN/256. If left blank, an attempt is made to guess from UCDs, column
names and unit annotations what expression to use.

dec=<expr>
Declination in degrees in the ICRS coordinate system for the position of each row of the input
table. This may simply be a column name, or it may be an algebraic expression calculated from
columns as explained in SUN/256. If left blank, an attempt is made to guess from UCDs, column
names and unit annotations what expression to use.

radius=<value/arcsec>
Maximum distance from the local table (ra,dec) position at which counterparts from the remote
table will be identified. This is a fixed value given in arcseconds, and must be in the range
[0,180] (this limit is currently enforced by the CDS Xmatch service).

cdstable=<value>
Identifier of the table from the CDS crossmatch service that is to be matched against the local
table. This identifier may be the standard VizieR identifier (e.g. "II/246/out" for the 2MASS
Point Source Catalogue) or "simbad" to indicate SIMBAD data.

See for instance the TAPVizieR table searching facility at http://tapvizier.u-strasbg.fr/adql/ to
find VizieR catalogue identifiers.

find=all|best|best-remote|each|each-dist
Determines which pair matches are included in the result.

* all: All matches

* best: Matched rows, best remote row for each input row

* best-remote: Matched rows, best input row for each remote row

* each: One row per input row, contains best remote match or blank

* each-dist: One row per input row, column giving distance only for best match
Note only the all mode is symmetric between the two tables.

Note also that there is a bug in best-remote matching. If the match is done in multiple blocks,
it's possible for a remote table row to appear matched against one local table row per uploaded
block, rather than just once for the whole result. If you're worried about that, set blocksize >=
rowCount. This may be fixed in a future release.

blocksize=<int-value>
The CDS Xmatch service operates limits on the maximum number of rows that can be uploaded and the
maximum number of rows that is returned as a result from a single query. In the case of large
input tables, they are broken down into smaller blocks, and one request is sent to the external
service for each block. This parameter controls the number of rows in each block. For an input
table with fewer rows than this value, the whole thing is done as a single request.

At time of writing, the maximum upload size is 100Mb (about 3Mrow; this does not depend on the
width of your table), and the maximum return size is 2Mrow.

Large blocksizes tend to be good (up to a point) for reducing the total amount of time a large
xmatch operation takes, but they can make it harder to see the job progressing. There is also the
danger (for ALL-type find modes) of exceeding the return size limit, which will result in
truncation of the returned result.

maxrec=<int-value>
Limit to the number of rows resulting from this operation. If the value is negative (the default)
no limit is imposed. Note however that there can be truncation of the result if the number of
records returned from a single chunk exceeds the service hard limit (2,000,000 at time of
writing).

compress=true|false
If true, the service is requested to provide HTTP-level compression for the response stream
(Accept-Encoding header is set to "gzip", see RFC 2616). This does not guarantee that compression
will happen but if the service honours this request it may result in a smaller amount of network
traffic at the expense of more processing on the server and client.

serviceurl=<url-value>
The URL at which the CDS Xmatch service can be found. Normally this should not be altered from the
default, but if other implementations of the same service are known, this parameter can be used to
access them.

usemoc=true|false
If true, first acquire a MOC coverage map from CDS, and use that to pre-filter rows before
uploading them for matching. This should improve efficiency, but have no effect on the result.

presort=true|false
If true, the rows are sorted by HEALPix index before they are uploaded to the CDS X-Match service.
If the match is done in multiple blocks, this may improve efficiency, since when matching against
a large remote catalogue the X-Match service likes to process requests in which sources are
grouped into a small region rather than scattered all over the sky.

Note this will have a couple of other side effects that may be undesirable: it will read all the
input rows into the task at once, which may make it harder to assess progress, and it will affect
the order of the rows in the output table.

It is probably only worth setting true for rather large (multi-million-row?) multi-block matches,
where both local and remote catalogues are spread over a significant fraction of the sky. But feel
free to experiment.

fixcols=none|dups|all
Determines how input columns are renamed before use in the output table. The choices are:

* none: columns are not renamed

* dups: columns which would otherwise have duplicate names in the output will be renamed to
indicate which table they came from

* all: all columns will be renamed to indicate which table they came from
If columns are renamed, the new ones are determined by suffix* parameters.

suffixin=<label>
If the fixcols parameter is set so that input columns are renamed for insertion into the output
table, this parameter determines how the renaming is done. It gives a suffix which is appended to
all renamed columns from the input table.

suffixremote=<label>
If the fixcols parameter is set so that input columns are renamed for insertion into the output
table, this parameter determines how the renaming is done. It gives a suffix which is appended to
all renamed columns from the CDS result table.

VERSION

       STILTS version 3.2-debian

       This  is the Debian version of Stilts, which lack the support of some file formats and network protocols.
       For differences see
       file:///usr/share/doc/stilts/README.Debian

AUTHOR