Okay, this is maybe something for the version after 1.1, but here goes:

We all want to be able to get some sort of brief record back to display in
a title list format or what have you.
But this still doesn't guarantee that we'll get back what we want ... I
might send a DC record that doesn't have a title field when Theo's app is
set up to display title only, resulting in a null display.

As we're passing a schema for the records to be in, can we add an xPath
parameter as well which says which field(s) we want returned from that
schema?

This would mean a lack of proliferation in little schemas just to return
the fields that we want for a particular application's output, while still
not having to transfer, parse and process the entire record in the client.

Obviously recordXPath would be optional, and have the normal suite of
diagnostics for when it can't be handled or the xpath is invalid for the
record.


For example:

<searchRetrieveRequest>
  <query>dc.creator="sanderson, r"</query>
  <startRecord>1</startRecord>
  <maximumRecords>10</maximumRecords>
  <recordSchema>http://www.loc.gov/standards/ead/</recordSchema>
  <recordXPath>/ead/eadheader/titlestmt/titleproper[1]</recordXPath>
</searchRetrieveRequest>

<searchRetrieveResponse>
  <numberOfRecords>1</numberOfRecords>
  <records>
     <record>
       <recordSchema>http://www.loc.gov/standards/ead/</recordSchema>
       <recordXPath>/ead/eadheader/titlestmt/titleproper[1]</recordXPath>
       <recordXML>
          <ead:titlestmt>This is Rob's ead record's title<ead:titlestmt>
       </recordXML>
     </record>
  </records>
</searchRetrieveResponse>


Thoughts?

Rob


--
      ,'/:. Rob Sanderson ([log in to unmask])
    ,'-/::::. http://www.o-r-g.org/~azaroth/
  ,'--/::(@)::. Special Collections and Archives, extension 3142
,'---/::::::::::. Nebmedes: telnet: nebmedes.o-r-g.org 7777
____/:::::::::::::. WWW: http://nebmedes.o-r-g.org:8000/
I L L U M I N A T I