At 23:02 24-05-2003 -0400, LeVan,Ralph wrote:

>These sound like serious folks with specific requirements and a commitment
>to serious code.  Make them do real z39.50.

I have total sympathy for this view, but my sense is that if we can't do
better than that, we (ie. the ZiNG/ZIG community) might as well just tell
the commercial content providers to go roll their own web service. That's a
totally valid position, but it seems to me that it begs a more
philosophical discussion about exactly who we hope will take up the SRW
protocol, if not those groups. We *were* looking for a broader audience
with SRW, right?

The funny thing about SOAP and its integration into modern development
environments is that it makes it easy as pie to develop customised
protocols for just about anything, and people seem to do so. What I see as
the major departure of the "metasearchers" is that they have no angst about
dealing with multiple protocols -- they have business models and suport
frameworks in place for handling it, and the users are paying for the party
but they're also, arguably, getting more interoperability and functionality
than we have been able to deliver with Z39.50.

In that context, the business case for implementing SRW (much less Z39.50)
is much weaker than it might have been 10 years ago, when network protocols
were black magic and metasearchers might have been technically feasible,
but they weren't practical business propositions. And it makes sense to me
to at least seek a dialogue with these folks, and see if we can meet them
halfway.

--Sebastian
--
Sebastian Hammer, Index Data <http://www.indexdata.dk/>
Ph: +45 3341 0100, Fax: +45 3341 0101