abstract objectType Interface

A description of a service interface. Since this type is abstract, one must use an Interface subclass to describe an actual interface. Additional interface subtypes (beyond WebService and WebBrowser) are defined in the VODataService schema.

Members

name	type	mult	description
accessURL	AccessURL	1 or more	The URL (or base URL) that a client uses to access the service. How this URL is to be interpreted and used depends on the specific Interface subclass Although the schema allows multiple occurrences of accessURL, multiple accessURLs are deprecated. Each interface should have exactly one access URL. Where an interface has several mirrors, the accessURL should reflect the “primary” (fastest, best-connected, best-maintained) site, the one that non-sophisticated clients will go to. Additional accessURLs should be put into mirrorURLs. Advanced clients can retrieve the mirrorURLs and empirically determine interfaces closer to their network location.
mirrorURL	MirrorURL	0 or more	A (base) URL of a mirror of this interface. As with accessURL, how this URL is to be interpreted and used depends on the specific Interface subclass This is intended exclusively for true mirrors, i.e., interfaces that are functionally identical to the original interface and that are operated by the same publisher. Other arrangements should be represented as separate services linked by mirror-of relationships.
securityMethod	SecurityMethod	0 or more	The mechanism the client must employ to authenticate to the service. Services not requiring authentication must provide at least one interface definition without a securityMethod defined.
testQueryString	ivoa:string	optional	Test data for exercising the service. This contains data that can be passed to the interface to retrieve a non-empty result. This can be used by validators within test suites. Exactly how agents should use the data contained in the testQueryString depends on the concrete interface class. For interfaces employing the HTTP GET method, however, this will typically be urlencoded parameters (as for the application/x-www-form-urlencoded media type).
version	ivoa:string		The version of a standard interface specification that this interface complies with. Most VO standards indicate the version in the standardID attribute of the capability. For these standards, the version attribute should not be used.
role	ivoa:string		A tag name that identifies the role the interface plays in the particular capability. If the value is equal to 'std' or begins with 'std:', then the interface refers to a standard interface defined by the standard referred to by the capability's standardID attribute. For an interface complying with some registered standard (i.e. has a legal standardID), the role can be matched against interface roles enumerated in standard resource record. The interface descriptions in the standard record can provide default descriptions so that such details need not be repeated here.

Containment

This is contained by Capability, StandardsRegExt:ServiceStandard