VALD-EMS request is an ordinary electronic mail, sent via INTERNET to: vald@galileo.ast.univie.ac.at or vald@131.130.36.8. Each mail can include ONLY ONE request. The request consists of a number of lines. ONLY THE FIRST 80 CHARACTERS OF EACH LINE ARE INTERPRETED BY VALD-EMS. The request starts with a line containing a string:
begin requestand ends with a line:
end requestSpaces are ignored and VALD is case insensitive, so the line
EndRequestsis also a valid termination for the request. All characters following the symbol # are ignored by VALD. This can be used for comments. For example:
Begin request # this is a comment for the first lineAll mail is processed at certain times of the day and valid requests are interpreted and submitted for execution in the order of arrival. After the request has been processed, the output file is mailed back to the client. This file contains: VALD-EMS REQUEST NUMBER, all diagnostic information (syntactic errors, wrong parameter values, etc.) and the extracted parameters. If the client has difficulty identifying the problem with his/her request, he/she should address the VALD administrator with the VALD-EMS request number, which appears on the first line of the reply mail.