testing a service activity

[Ray Plante]

Hi Nicholas,

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008, nicolas wrote:
> Is there a simple a simple way to know if a service is currently active or 
> not ?
> If there is not, could it be possible for each service to implement for 
> example a "isActive" method returning a simple value that would immediateley 
> identify its state ?

The NVO project has a monitoring service that is configured to watch 
specific services (at 
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/vo/monitor/monitor.pl?services_and_status=list),
so it's not quite as general as you want.  However, perhaps Michael could 
comment on the the underlying software that might be helpful.

cheers,
Ray