SOAP Services Description

The Critical Site Network tool uses data from both ArcGIS Server (for the mapping services) and from SOAP Services (for complex non-spatial queries). These SOAP services are implemented in Microsoft Web Developer 2008 Express Edition and use the same SQL Server database that is used to hold the spatial data in ArcSDE.

The SOAP services endpoint can be accessed here: http://dev.unep-wcmc.org/CSN_WebServices/DataServices.asmx. Each of the method calls is described in the SOAP interface. All of the methods beginning with GetSite.. are used to retrieve information on sites from the Sites table. The GetLookupValues and GetMatchingCSNs methods are used in all of the filters to retrieve lookup values for the filters and matching critical sites and species. The input parameters for these methods are SQL statements which are generated in the Flex application on the fly depending on what the user has selected in the set of filters. Therefore, there is some additional coding in the SOAP services to prevent SQL injection attacks.