Hello,
I have implemented a Web Service which is near what you suggest.
If you want to use a Web Service without special soap client, you can use the useful following online tool :
How to do it : replace just the default URL with the below URL and push the Retrieve button
The URL to access to the Web Service :
http://cdsws.u-strasbg.fr/axis/UCDList.jws?wsdl
The online tool :
http://www.soapclient.com/soaptest.html
Regards,
André
P.S. : the online tool may not work with too old browsers
Mark Taylor wrote:
> > A UCD resolver is now available as a Web Service at CDS.
> > See http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cdsws.gml for more details and an example
> > of use.
>
> Another web service which would be useful is provision of a list of all
> the currently-defined UCDs (with descriptions).
>
> TOPCAT,
> a table-editing tool I am developing, has cause to ask the user to
> select a UCD with which to label a column from a list of all known UCDs.
> I currently construct this list by screen-scraping the page at
> http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/UCDs,
> which is downloaded and stored at build time.
> It could be good however to be able to retrieve and parse such a list
> at run time, so that recently-defined UCDs are available even when
> an old version of the tool is being used.
>
> I'm not a SOAP expert so I'm not sure what would be the best way to
> supply the result of such a query, but I guess it could be a simple
> XML document, perhaps reflecting the hierarchical nature of the list,
> something like:
>
> <ucd id="AT" description="Atomic Data">
> <ucd id="AT_COLL" description="Atomic Collisional Quantities">
> <ucd id="AT_COLL_EXCIT-RATE" description="Collisional Excitation Rate"/>
> <ucd id="AT_COLL_STRENGTH" description="Collisional Strength"/>
> </ucd>
> <ucd id="AT_CONFIG" description="Electronic Configuration"/>
> ...
> </ucd>
> </ucd>
> <ucd id="CLASS" description="Various Classification Descriptors"/>
> ...
>
> you get the idea. Even something as simple as a flat tab-separated list
> would be OK though, as long as the endpoint and format could be
> relied upon.
>
> Mark
>
> --
> Mark Taylor Starlink Programmer Physics, Bristol University, UK
> m.b.taylor@bris.ac.uk 0117 928 8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/