Management of Catalogs at CDS

VizieR (Ochsenbein et al. 2000) provides access to the most complete library of published astronomical catalogs (data tables and associated data) available online and organized in a self-documented database. (There were 11769 catalogs in November 2013.) Indexing the metadata in the VizieR search engine requires the expertise of scientists and documentalists for each catalog ingested. The metadata go into an efficient position search engine that is adapted to big data. (For instance, the GAIA simulation catalog has more than two billion objects). Information in VizieR tables is well described and can be retrieved easily. The search results provide visibility to catalogs with tools and protocols to disseminate data to the Virtual Observatory, thus giving scientists data that is reusable by dedicated tools (e.g. image vizualisation tools). Also, new functionality allows users to extract all photometric data in catalogs for a given position. Finally, it is also through cross-identification tools that the CDS becomes a partner in producing large data sets, such as GAIA.