> Neither BinX nor DFDL are binary formats, as such, but rather
> ways of describing binary formats.
Yes, but the benefit of describing them using an xml format is that one could then make binary data accessible to xml tools through a translation mechanism making such data as FITS available to new VObs tools without requiring specially written access libraries.
At least, that's what I thought they could be used for - techies will probably jump on me now :)
Cheers,
Tony.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Mann [mailto:rgm-at-roe.ac.uk]
> Sent: 14 April 2004 15:21
> To: Tony Linde
> Cc: 'VOTable mailing list'
> Subject: RE: Binary data (branch from future of VOTable)
>
>
> Hi folks,
>
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Tony Linde wrote:
> > Found links:
> > http://www.edikt.org/binx/
> > http://forge.gridforum.org/projects/dfdl-wg/
>
> Both these have been mentioned on this list before.
> Neither BinX nor DFDL are binary formats, as such, but rather
> ways of describing binary formats.
>
> BinX is an XML language for describing binary data
> files. It was developed by the edikt project, based at the
> National e-Science Centre here in Edinburgh. I've been
> working with the edikt team on this and, as I've noted on
> this list before, we've got FITS bintable<->VOTable
> conversion working through BinX (as well as it can, given the
> differences between them).
>
> DFDL is meant to be a generalisation of BinX to
> describe *all* data formats, not just binary ones: one of the
> problems we found with using BinX to translate between FITS
> and VOTable was that it couldn't handle the ASCII FITS
> headers without an additional processing step.
>
> The ethos behind DFDL is that we (for any community
> "we") won't settle on a single data format, but we might
> settle on a single way of describing data formats, and then
> we can translate between them.
>
> As I've noted on this list before, there's a
> long-standing action on me to write a note on BinX for the
> AstroGrid wiki. I've still not done it, but still intend to
> email this list once I have.
>
> cheers
>
> Bob
>
Received on 2004-04-14Z16:29:27