Dear Graham

Many thanks for taking a look. Not sure what if anything has happened but things seem to now be working (as at afternoon of 27th June 2008) at least in part - so if the webservices dictionary was down it is now back online (or whatever other glitch has been fixed). Our input routine, which first searches an internal dictionary (based on the Recorder-3 dictionary) and then the webservices dictionary to find Latin Names and NBN keys is now finding Ramularia centranthi from the webservices dictionary along with items such as Mytilus edulis (Mussel) and Harmonia axyridis (Harlequin Ladybird) which it could not find yesterday (again from the webservices dictionary).

However, as you surmise, it could still NOT find the mollusc (Polinices catena) and I assume this relates to your comment about species not being found in the dictionary if there are no actual records for that species on the NBN Gateway.

I must admit that this comes as a bit of a surprise and a shock. Could you possibly point me to Andy's previous comment/explanation of this as I seem to have missed it and am unable to find it.

We had always thought that the webservices dictionary would supply information about any species names held within it and was not limited in any way, never mind limited to species currently recorded within the Gateway. Surely this must mean that taxon name and key information for a fair number of species are not available via this mechanism. I am very pleased to hear this is being reviewed and would hope that the current service is expanded to allow all species in the dictionary to be available, and that fairly soon. I am sure rECOrd is not the only organisation that would want this asap.

If you cannot point me to Andy's explanation could you possibly ask him to re-iterate it in this thread please.

Many thanks for your time, trouble and interest. Much appreciated.

Steve