I don't share Ed's view of the W3C (though I certainly understand it).
There are two reasons for not taking this to w3c.
One, there was strong objection to the w3c route, voiced at both of the two
meeting where we discussed this (June 2005 and March 2006). When I say
"strong", I don't mean "unanimous" or even nearly so, but a substantial
number of people objected strongly, on the basis that the w3c is not "open":
it is very expensive to join and therefore not an option for everyone. This
is in contrast to OASIS where corporate membership is expensive but they do
offer individual membership (which w3c doesn't).
A second reason is that SRU and CQL are really out of scope for w3c. They
don't do protocols or query languages, in general. Sure, they do SOAP, but
that's infrastructure (SRU would be considered application). For query
language, XQuery is a special case. There are reasons (most likely
well-known to us all) why w3c was compelled to do XQuery, but a language
like CQL just isn't within their cultural consciousness. (I don't see CQL as
a business threat, though, as Ed suggests, nor do I agree with the
"corporate greed" characterization, any more than any other group is so
motivated.)
IETF: I'd have to say from my perspective that one reason for not taking
this to IETF is that procedurally it's a black hole. The ZIG long ago had
mainline members who were very well connected to the IETF - Kunze, Lynch
(two of them), Kevin Gamiel, Margaret St. Pierre ... to name a few ...
certainly not me. With their help we were able to put through some RFCs:
Z39.50 over TCP, the Z39.50 URL specs, WAIS.... Those folks aren't around
anymore. Trying to navigate IETF without them would have been an unbearably
painful experience (in my view).
--Ray
----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward C. Zimmermann" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 6:28 AM
Subject: Re: SRU Version 2.0: proposed OASIS charter for a Web Search
Services Technical Committee
> Quoting "Dr R. Sanderson" <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>
> > W3C and IETF were vaguely interested in CQL [*], but not the higher
>
> The IETF today is not the power that IETF of days long gone was... IETF
has
> (still) DASL and a host of no so unrelated standardization things going..
>
> The W3C is a pay-for-club ruled and directed by deep pocket corporate
> greed worried about missing the train of the "next big thing".
> Since SRU can potentially pose a threat to some dominant players in the
> market should it be tossed into the den of the W3c it would go the path
> of most of their standards into needless complexity, patents, arogance
> (with over a decade of f-cking with XML, Web and hypermedia they still
> are miles behind the state of design that already existed with HyTime by
> the turn of the 1980s into the 1990 and published as ISO standard in 1992)
> and ruin. If anyone thinks that Z39.50 contained everyone's kitchen sink..
> just think about what would happen under the wings of .... if anyone even
> cared (and not bury it like much of the standards swoooshed around at the
W3c).
>
> Since its Web like XML standards.. and that's what OASIS is for.. and
> they are much nicer to deal with.....
>
>
> > level protocol(s) that (could) use it. These two organisations tend to
> > be a bit lower level, whereas OASIS works with the level of standard one
> > up, where we think that SRU fits in more naturally. For example, OASIS
> > has the Open Document Format and WS-BPEL which build on the sorts of
> > lower level standard defined by W3C.
> >
> >
> > * To my understanding. I had some conversation about CQL with the IETF
> > folks, but Ray (?) dealt with W3C folks more than I.
> >
> > HTH,
> >
> > Rob
> >
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