Provided by: stilts_3.4.7-4_all bug

NAME

       stilts-coneskymatch - Crossmatches table on sky position against remote cone service

SYNOPSIS

       stilts coneskymatch [ifmt=<in-format>] [istream=true|false] [in=<table>] [icmd=<cmds>]
                           [ocmd=<cmds>]
                           [omode=out|meta|stats|count|checksum|cgi|discard|topcat|samp|tosql|gui]
                           [out=<out-table>] [ofmt=<out-format>] [ra=<expr>] [dec=<expr>]
                           [sr=<expr/deg>] [find=best|all|each] [usefoot=true|false]
                           [footnside=<int-value>] [copycols=<colid-list>] [scorecol=<col-name>]
                           [parallel=<n>] [erract=abort|ignore|retry|retry<n>]
                           [ostream=true|false] [fixcols=none|dups|all] [suffix0=<label>]
                           [suffix1=<label>] [servicetype=cone|ssa|sia1|sia2|sia]
                           [serviceurl=<url-value>] [verb=1|2|3] [dataformat=<value>]
                           [emptyok=true|false] [compress=true|false]

DESCRIPTION

       Note:  this command is very inefficient for large tables, and in most cases cdsskymatch or
       tapskymatch provide better alternatives.

       coneskymatch is a utility which performs a cone search-like query to a remote  server  for
       each  row  of  an input table. Each of these queries returns a table with one row for each
       item held by the server in the region of sky represented by the input row. The results  of
       all  the  queries  are  then concatenated into one big output table which is the output of
       this command.

       The type  of  virtual  observatory  service  queried  is  determined  by  the  servicetype
       parameter.  Typically  it  will be a Cone Search service, which queries a remote catalogue
       for astronomical objects or sources in a particular region. However, you  can  also  query
       Simple  Image  Access  and Simple Spectral Access services in just the same way, to return
       tables of available image and spectral resources in the relevant regions.

       The identity of the server to query is given by  the  serviceurl  parameter.  Some  advice
       about how to locate URLs for suitable services is given in SUN/256.

       The  effect  of  this  command  is  like  doing  a  positional crossmatch where one of the
       catalogues is local and the other is remote and exposes its data via a cone search/SIA/SSA
       service. Because of both the network communication and the necessarily naive crossmatching
       algorithm (which scales linearly with the size of the local catalogue) however, it is only
       suitable  if  the  local  catalogue  has a reasonably small number of rows, unless you are
       prepared to wait a long time.

       The parallel parameter allows you to perform multiple cone searches concurrently, so  that
       instead  of completing the first cone search, then the second, then the third, the program
       can be executing a number of them at once.  This  can  speed  up  operation  considerably,
       especially  in the face of network latency, but beware that submitting a very large number
       of queries  simultaneously  to  the  same  server  may  overload  it,  resulting  in  some
       combination  of  failed  queries, ultimately slower runtimes, and unpopularity with server
       admins. Best to start with a low parallelism and cautiously increase  it  to  see  whether
       there are gains in performance.

       Note that when running, coneskymatch can generate a lot of WARNING messages. Most of these
       are complaining about badly formed VOTables being returned from the cone search  services.
       STILTS does its best to work out what the service responses mean in this case, and usually
       makes a good enough job of it.

       Note: this task was known as multicone in its experimental form in STILTS v1.2 and v1.3.

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.  This  parameter  is  ignored for scheme-specified
              tables.

       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).  This  parameter  is
              ignored for scheme-specified tables.

       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 scheme specification of the form :<scheme-name>:<scheme-args>.

                * 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.

              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.

       omode=out|meta|stats|count|checksum|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

                * checksum

                * 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.

       sr=<expr/deg>
              Expression which evaluates to the search radius in degrees for the request at  each
              row  of  the input table. This will often be a constant numerical value, but may be
              the name or ID of a column in the input table, or a function involving one.

       find=best|all|each
              Determines which matches are retained.

                * best: Only the matching query table row closest to the input table row will  be
                  output.  Input  table  rows  with  no  matches  will  be  omitted.  (Note  this
                  corresponds to the best1 option in the pair matching commands, and best1  is  a
                  permitted alias).

                * all: All query table rows which match the input table row will be output. Input
                  table rows with no matches will be omitted.

                * each: There will be one output table row for each input table row.  If  matches
                  are found, the closest one from the query table will be output, and in the case
                  of no matches, the query table columns will be blank.

       usefoot=true|false
              Determines whether an attempt will be made to restrict searches in accordance  with
              available  footprint  information. If this is set true, then before any of the per-
              row queries are performed, an attempt may be made to acquire footprint  information
              about  the  servce.  If  such  information can be obtained, then queries which fall
              outside the footprint, and hence which are known to yield no results, are  skipped.
              This can speed up the search considerably.

              Currently,  the only footprints available are those provided by the CDS MOC (Multi-
              Order Coverage map) service, which covers  VizieR  and  a  few  other  cone  search
              services.

       footnside=<int-value>
              Determines the HEALPix Nside parameter for use with the MOC footprint service. This
              tuning parameter determines the resolution of the footprint  if  available.  Larger
              values  give  better  resolution,  hence  a  better  chance of avoiding unnecessary
              queries, but processing them takes longer and retrieving and storing them  is  more
              expensive.

              The  value  must  be a power of 2, and at the time of writing, the MOC service will
              not supply footprints at resolutions greater than nside=512, so it should be <=512.

              Only used if usefoot=true.

       copycols=<colid-list>
              List of columns from the input table which are to be copied to  the  output  table.
              Each column identified here will be prepended to the columns of the combined output
              table, and its value for each row taken from the input table row which provided the
              parameters of the query which produced it. See SUN/256 for list syntax. The default
              setting is "*", which means that all columns from the input table are  included  in
              the output.

       scorecol=<col-name>
              Gives  the name of a column in the output table to contain the distance between the
              requested central position and  the  actual  position  of  the  returned  row.  The
              distance  returned is an angular distance in degrees. If a null value is chosen, no
              distance column will appear in the output table.

       parallel=<n>
              Allows multiple cone searches to be performed concurrently. If set to  the  default
              value,  1, the cone query corresponding to the first row of the input table will be
              dispatched, when that is completed the query corresponding to the second  row  will
              be  dispatched, and so on. If set to <n>, then queries will be overlapped in such a
              way that up to approximately <n> may be running at any one time.

              Whether increasing <n> is a good idea, and what might be a sensible maximum  value,
              depends on the characteristics of the service being queried. In particular, setting
              it to too large a number may overload the service resulting in some combination  of
              failed queries, ultimately slower runtimes, and unpopularity with server admins.

              The  maximum  value permitted for this parameter by default is 5. This limit may be
              raised by use of the service.maxparallel system property but use that  option  with
              great  care  since  you may overload services and make yourself unpopular with data
              centre admins. As a rule, you should only increase this value if you have  obtained
              permission  from  the  data  centres  whose services on which you will be using the
              increased parallelism.

       erract=abort|ignore|retry|retry<n>
              Determines what will happen if any of the individual cone search requests fails. By
              default  the  task  aborts. That may be the best thing to do, but for unreliable or
              poorly implemented services you may find that some searches fail and others succeed
              so  it can be best to continue operation in the face of a few failures. The options
              are:

                * abort: Failure of any query terminates the task.

                * ignore: Failure of a query is treated the same as  a  query  which  returns  no
                  rows.

                * retry:  Failed  queries  are retried until they succeed; an increasing delay is
                  introduced for each failure. Use with care - if the failure is for  some  good,
                  or  at  least  reproducible  reason  this  could  prevent  the  task  from ever
                  completing.

                * retry<n>: Failed queries are retried at most a fixed number <n>  of  times;  an
                  increasing  delay  is introduced for each failure. If failures persist the task
                  terminates.

       ostream=true|false
              If set true, this will cause the operation to stream on output, so that the  output
              table  is  built  up  as the results are obtained from the cone search service. The
              disadvantage of this is that some output modes and  formats  need  multiple  passes
              through the data to work, so depending on the output destination, the operation may
              fail if this is set. Use with care (or be prepared for the operation to fail).

       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.

       suffix0=<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.

       suffix1=<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 cone result table.

       servicetype=cone|ssa|sia1|sia2|sia
              Selects the type of data access service to contact. Most commonly this will be  the
              Cone Search service itself, but there are one or two other possibilities:

                * cone:  Cone  Search  protocol  -  returns  a  table  of objects found near each
                  location. See Cone Search standard.

                * ssa: Simple Spectral Access protocol - returns a table  of  spectra  near  each
                  location. See SSA standard.

                * sia1:  Simple  Image Access protocol version 1 - returns a table of images near
                  each location. See SIA 1.0 standard.

                * sia2: Simple Image Access protocol version 2 - returns a table of  images  near
                  each location. See SIA 2.0 standard.

                * sia: alias for sia1

       serviceurl=<url-value>
              The  base part of a URL which defines the queries to be made. Additional parameters
              will be  appended  to  this  using  CGI  syntax  ("name=value",  separated  by  '&'
              characters). If this value does not end in either a '?' or a '&', one will be added
              as appropriate.

              See SUN/256 for discussion of how to locate service  URLs  corresponding  to  given
              datasets.

       verb=1|2|3
              Verbosity level of the tables returned by the query service. A value of 1 indicates
              the bare minimum and 3 indicates all available information.

       dataformat=<value>
              Indicates the format of data objects described in the returned table.  The  meaning
              of this is dependent on the value of the servicetype parameter:

                * servicetype=cone: not used

                * servicetype=ssa: gives the MIME type of spectra referenced in the output table,
                  also special values  "votable",  "fits",  "compliant",  "graphic",  "all",  and
                  others (value of the SSA FORMAT parameter).

                * servicetype=sia1:  gives the MIME type required for images/resources referenced
                  in the output table, corresponding to the SIA  FORMAT  parameter.  The  special
                  values  "GRAPHIC"  (all graphics formats) and "ALL" (no restriction) as defined
                  by SIAv1 are also permissible.  For  SIA  version  1  only,  this  defaults  to
                  "image/fits".

                * servicetype=sia2:  gives the MIME type required for images/resources referenced
                  in the output table, corresponding to the SIA  FORMAT  parameter.  The  special
                  values  "GRAPHIC"  (all graphics formats) and "ALL" (no restriction) as defined
                  by SIAv1 are also permissible.

                * servicetype=sia: gives the MIME type required for  images/resources  referenced
                  in  the  output  table,  corresponding to the SIA FORMAT parameter. The special
                  values "GRAPHIC" (all graphics formats) and "ALL" (no restriction)  as  defined
                  by  SIAv1  are  also  permissible.  For  SIA  version  1 only, this defaults to
                  "image/fits".

       emptyok=true|false
              Whether the table metadata which is returned from a search result with zero rows is
              to  be believed. According to the spirit, though not the letter, of the cone search
              standard, a cone search service which returns no data ought nevertheless to  return
              the  correct  column  headings.  Unfortunately this is not always the case. If this
              parameter is set true, it is assumed that the  service  behaves  properly  in  this
              respect;  if  it  does  not  an  error may result. In that case, set this parameter
              false. A consequence of setting it false is that in the event of no  results  being
              returned, the task will return no table at all, rather than an empty one.

       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.

SEE ALSO

       stilts(1)

       If  the  package  stilts-doc  is installed, the full documentation SUN/256 is available in
       HTML format:
       file:///usr/share/doc/stilts/sun256/index.html

VERSION

       STILTS version 3.4.7-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

       Mark Taylor (Bristol University)

                                             Mar 2017                      STILTS-CONESKYMATCH(1)