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### 4.3 Input Schemes

As well as being able to load tables from external data streams, TOPCAT offers a way to specify tables that do not correspond to a stream of bytes. These may be defined programmatically or interact with external services in some way that is not as straightforward as decoding a stream of bytes.

Such tables are defined with a scheme specification string, of the form:

       :<scheme-name>:<scheme-specific-part>

so that for instance "`:skysim:1e6`" specifies a million-row simulated star catalogue, as described by the skysim scheme documentation below.

At present, the only ways that scheme-specified tables can be loaded are:

- naming them on the command line at startup
- entering them in the Location field in the Load Window

Some more GUI-friendly way to load them may be introduced in future releases.

The following subsections describe all the schemes that are available by default. It is also possible to add new schemes at runtime by using the `startable.schemes` system property.

- 4.3.1 `skysim`
- 4.3.2 `attractor`
- 4.3.3 `jdbc`
- 4.3.4 `loop`
- 4.3.5 `test`
- 4.3.6 `class`

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TOPCAT - Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables
Starlink User Note253
TOPCAT web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk
Mailing list: topcat-user@jiscmail.ac.uk