Support for the VOTable format (Virtual Observatory Table, defined by IVOA) in Julia.

Supports:

• ✅ Read VOTable files, both XML (TABLEDATA) and binary (BINARY, BINARY2) formats
• ✅ Parse numbers, strings, datetimes (optional), units (optional, uses Unitful.jl)
• ✅ Extract column descriptions from VOTable files into Julia table metadata
• ✅ Write VOTable files

Does not support (yet):

• FITS binary serialization format
• Multiple tables in a single file

See also: https://github.com/JuliaAstro/VOTables.jl, an older package with similar goals. That one was never registered in General, and the current VOTables.jl package is more performant and featureful.
See also: VirtualObservatory.jl for integrations with online services following Virtual Observatory protocols.

using VOTables

# only parse plain data types (numbers, strings) and datetimes:
tbl = VOTables.read("tbl.vot")

# also parse physical units:
using Unitful
tbl = VOTables.read("tbl.vot"; unitful=true)

The result is a StructArray be default, a Julia table with column-based storage. Whole columns can be accessed as tbl.colname, rows as tbl[123], and individual values as tbl.colname[123] or tbl[123].colname. To avoid compilation overhead, especially for very wide tables, can use DictArray instead (from DictArrays.jl): VOTables.read(DictArray, "tbl.vot").