UCO/Lick Observatory, Kerr Hall, UCSC, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
In the course of designing a major mosaicked instrument (DEIMOS) we need tools to manage the large set of FITS keywords required for instrument control and data reduction/archiving. We have therefore constructed a relational database schema which describes FITS keywords, and have implemented it using Sybase. In this schema FITS keywords and structures are entities, having attributes such as format, units, datatype, minimum and maximum value, semantics, etc. The schema was expanded and generalized to document information flow and database schema (becoming self-referential). Many useful output products (documentation, diagnostics, configuration, and source code) can be generated from one authoritative source of keyword information.
FITS,keywords,database,relational,autogenerated,AI,digraph,GUI