VOResource v0.8.2

[Thomas Boch]

"Patricio F. Ortiz" wrote:
[...]
> 
> Using descriptions only, as Anita said, has far more ambiguities than using
> UCDs (including different spellings) and can be quite frustrating. Adding
> one more element to a column element seems to be a small price to pay to
> make finding of catalogs much easier and not to speak of data-merging.
> In an experiment I carried in the last few months, UCDs prove extremely
> useful to recognize catalogs which would otherwise pass unnoticed by
> scanning their titles and keywords. I agree that assigning UCDs can be
> tedious, but so is to write meaningful column explanations which would
> uniquely lead you to a given quantity. I'm sure CDS has already tools to
> assign UCDs based on a description and perhaps units, and as long as that
> tool is widely available, there should be no excuse to assign UCDs to new
> columns.
> 

Indeed, such a tool does exist, and is available online at
http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/UCD/assign/
To use it, you'll have to upload a file describing the different fields
of your data (including datatype, column name, unit, desccription). A
sample file is available to help you building this file.
As an output, this tool provides for each field a list of suggested
UCDs.

Cheers,

Thomas