>> >I'm confused about the //explain/serverInfo/database element and its
>> Not quite. If it were being used to describe a non Z39.50, non SRW, non
>> OAI database, it might be just an identifier for the database or set of
>> records.
>Okay, so it's more overloaded than I thought.
Right. 'database' is probably best described as: the part of a URL
which identifies the database that isn't transport/host/port. So in
Z3950r/z3950s, it's the database name. In SRW, SRU, OAI, FTP,
OpenSearch, etc, etc, it's the path in the URL. But if one were to
somehow use IRC as an information retrieval protocol (well, you -could-,
I guess) it would be the channel name.
>Seeing that the description is unchanged in that draft formal standards
>document, perhaps you might consider splitting the secondary (SRW/U)
>context meaning into a distinct optional element "path_info" or somesuch,
>with an explanation like:
At the moment it's easier to fix the prose than have all of the SRW/U
implementations rewrite a mandatory element in their description.
In the future, however, one might have a protocol that generates the
requirement for both database AND URL path, eg a multiple database SOAP
protocol, at which point we would need to come to some solution like
that.
Rob
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