A JDBC-Based General Tool for Astronomical Database Access and Object-Entry Input

The major function of the Survey Strategy System (SSS) of the Large sky Area Multi-Object fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) is to generate observational plans and direct sky surveys. The management of an object catalog will thus be the initializing step of a survey. Astronomers will need to select targets from various database resources according to their research subjects and then input data entries of the objects into the catalog. Using object-oriented programming and the JDBC technology, we have designed and realized a general tool for database access and object data input. It has the capability of accessing databases, extracting data of objects, converting data formats, inputting object catalogs, and supporting processing of massive amount of data. With this tool astronomers can select target objects and manage survey catalogs rather conveniently.