The VizieR database of astronomical catalogues

VizieR is a database grouping in an homogeneous way thousands of astronomical catalogues gathered for decades by the Centre de Donnees de Strasbourg (CDS) and participating institutes. The history and current status of this large collection is briefly presented, and the way these catalogues are being standardized to fit in the VizieR system is described. The architecture of the database is then presented, with emphasis on the management of links and of accesses to very large catalogues. Several query interfaces are currently available, making use of the ASU protocol, for browsing purposes or for use by other data processing systems such as visualisation tools.