Future Astronomical Data Formats: Evolution and/or Revolution

摘要

This discussion followed on from the success of the ADASS 2014 data formats BoF (Mink et al. 2015), reviewing the events of the intervening year and aiming to encourage a common approach to the way astronomical data is stored and accessed. It seems that not are all convinced that FITS will be able to evolve to meet all our perceived needs, but at the same time we have not yet converged on a generally accepted new common format and a way to use it. Accordingly, at the moment we appear to be living in a multi-format environment, and discussion centered on how best we should respond to that. There appears to be a consensus that generally agreed data models are an important part of the solution, and perhaps that is where effort should be concentrated.