<p>VOTable is an XML-based format for tabular data endorsed by the
<a href="http://www.ivoa.net/" >International Virtual Observatory Alliance</a>;
while the tabular data which can be encoded is by design close to
what FITS allows, it provides for much richer encoding of structure
and metadata.
Most of the table data exchanged by VO services is in VOTable format,
and it can be used for local table storage as well.
</p>

<p>Any table which conforms to the 
VOTable 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 or 1.4
<a href="http://www.ivoa.net/documents/VOTable/">specifications</a>
can be read.
This includes all the defined cell data serializations; cell data may be 
included in-line as XML elements (TABLEDATA serialization),
included/referenced as a FITS table (FITS serialization), or
included/referenced as a raw binary stream (BINARY or BINARY2 serialization).
The handler does not attempt to be fussy about input VOTable documents,
and it will have a good go at reading VOTables which
violate the standards in various ways.
</p>

<p>Much, but not all, of the metadata contained in a VOTable
document is retained when the table is read in.
The attributes
<code>unit</code>, <code>ucd</code>, <code>xtype</code> and <code>utype</code>,
and the elements
<code>COOSYS</code>, <code>TIMESYS</code> and <code>DESCRIPTION</code>
attached to table columns or parameters,
are read and may be used by the application as appropriate
or examined by the user.
However, information encoded in the hierarchical structure
of the VOTable document, including <code>GROUP</code> structure, is not
currently retained when a VOTable is read.
</p>

<p>VOTable documents may contain more than one actual table
(<code>TABLE</code> element).
To specify a specific single table,
the table position indicator is given by the
zero-based index of the <code>TABLE</code> element in a breadth-first search.
Here is an example VOTable document:
<pre><![CDATA[
   <VOTABLE>
     <RESOURCE>
       <TABLE name="Star Catalogue"> ... </TABLE>
       <TABLE name="Galaxy Catalogue"> ... </TABLE>
     </RESOURCE>
   </VOTABLE>
]]></pre>
If this is available in a file named "cats.xml"
then the two tables could be named as
"cats.xml#0" and "cats.xml#1" respectively.
</p>

