ENH: ipac.irsa backend refactoring to use TAP rather than Gator

CHANGES.rst

@@ -9,6 +9,13 @@ ipac.irsa
 
 - New class to access the Moving Object Search Tool (MOST) added. [#2660]
 
+- The IRSA module's backend has been refactored to favour VO services and to
+  run the queries through TAP rather than Gator.
+  New method ``query_tap`` is added to enable ADQL queries, async-named
+  methods have been removed. The ``selcols`` kwarg has been renamed to
+  ``columns``, and the ``cache`` and ``verbose`` kwargs have been
+  deprecated as they have no effect. [#2823]
+
 gaia
 ^^^^
 

astroquery/ipac/irsa/__init__.py

@@ -4,8 +4,8 @@
 ===============
 
 This module contains various methods for querying the
-IRSA Catalog Query Service(CatQuery) and the Moving
-Object Search Tool (MOST).
+IRSA Services.
+
 """
 from astropy import config as _config
 
@@ -14,13 +14,6 @@ class Conf(_config.ConfigNamespace):
     """
     Configuration parameters for `astroquery.ipac.irsa`.
     """
-
-    irsa_server = _config.ConfigItem(
-        'https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/Gator/nph-query',
-        'Name of the IRSA mirror to use.')
-    gator_list_catalogs = _config.ConfigItem(
-        'https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/Gator/nph-scan',
-        'URL from which to list all the public catalogs in IRSA.')
     most_server = _config.ConfigItem(
         'https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/MOST/nph-most',
         'URL address of the MOST service.')
@@ -34,6 +27,7 @@ class Conf(_config.ConfigNamespace):
     timeout = _config.ConfigItem(
         60,
         'Time limit for connecting to the IRSA server.')
+    tap_url = _config.ConfigItem('https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/TAP', 'IRSA TAP URL')
 
 
 conf = Conf()