Geochronology data contained in the Canadian Geochronology Knowledgebase is accessible through XML Web services. This page describes what is available, states where it can be located, and hints at how you can retrieve the data programmatically.

The database includes these tables:

• GSC_Age - catalogue of age assessments
• Rockfile - catalogue of samples
• Refs - catalogue of reference materials
• Rockref - bridge table between Rockfile and Refs

These tables are combined into a flat file view; the services query this view for information. You can get data from one table at a time or you can get all the data in the view at once. The data may be filtered to obtain only that which corresponds to a particular

• province or territory, or
• project, or
• National Topographic System (NTS) sheet.

Note that you must supply parameters to some of the service methods, as described on the next page. Finally, you can obtain the results in either XML or comma-delimited format.

The Web services are listed below. Those services returning data as XML have a different address from those returning comma-delimited text. In each table you can obtain the name of the desired service method by finding the intersection of the data table name and the particular filter.

Services returning data in XML format

Methods are located at http://gdr.ess.nrcan.gc.ca/ geochron/web_services/TableAsXML.asmx

XML	unfiltered	by Province
All tables	allAsXML	allAsXMLByProv
Rockfile	rockfileAsXML	rockfileAsXMLByProv
Refs	refsAsXML	refsAsXMLByProv
RockRef	rockrefAsXML	rockrefAsXMLByProv
GSC_Age	gsc_ageAsXML	gsc_ageAsXMLByProv
XML	byProject	by NTS
all tables	allAsXMLbyProj	allAsXMLbyNTS
Rockfile	rockfileAsXMLbyProj	rockfileAsXMLbyNTS
Refs	refsAsXMLbyProj	refsAsXMLbyNTS
RockRef	rockrefAsXMLbyProj	rockrefAsXMLbyNTS
GSC_Age	gsc_ageAsXMLbyProj	gsc_ageAsXMLbyNTS

Services returning data in comma-delimited text format

Methods are located at http://gdr.ess.nrcan.gc.ca/ geochron/web_services/TableAsCSV.asmx

CSV	unfiltered	by Province
all tables	allAsCSV	allAsCSVByProv
Rockfile	rockfileAsCSV	rockfileAsCSVByProv
Refs	refsAsCSV	refsAsCSVByProv
RockRef	rockrefAsCSV	rockrefAsCSVByProv
GSC_Age	gsc_ageAsCSV	gsc_ageAsCSVByProv
CSV	byProject	by NTS
all tables	allAsCSVbyProj	allAsCSVbyNTS
Rockfile	rockfileAsCSVbyProj	rockfileAsCSVbyNTS
Refs	refsAsCSVbyProj	refsAsCSVbyNTS
RockRef	rockrefAsCSVByProj	rockrefAsCSVByNTS
GSC_Age	gsc_ageAsCSVByProj	gsc_ageAsCSVByNTS

The parameters required to be supplied to some methods are given below. Failure to provide the correct parameter (for example, a valid province code for "...ByProv" methods) results in an error message being returned.

Web service method parameters

parameter name	description	values
pr	two-letter abbreviation for province or territory	AB, BC, MB, NB, NF, NS, NU, NT, ON, PE, QC, SK, YT
project	project name	Churchill 1999, Churchill-Y12, Grenville 2003, Yukon 2002
nts	National Topographic System sheet number	e.g. 64 or 64A or 64A04

Obtaining data using these services is described briefly on the next page.

Basic description

Web services are like other functions or methods available to a programming environment. The developer needs to know :

• where the method can be found,
• the name of the method,
• any parameters the method needs to complete processing, and
• the type of result.

Typically, a Web service will describe all of this information via a Web Services Decription Language (WSDL) document. The WSDL is an XML document sometimes referred to as the "contract": the service will process and return a result given a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) message containing the correct parameters.

For these geochronology Web services, most of this information is given on the previous page. For all methods listed, the result is a "string" as defined by Microsoft's .NET environment. This data type is easily understood by most programming and scripting languages, or may be easily converted.

NOTE that the result may be very large and may thus require special handling or increased memory, depending on the programming environment.