I came across a similar perception by a Russian programmer who has
provided some kind of provisionary SRU interface to a Z39.50 portal for
our European Library portal. That misperception results from the way
many metasearch user interfaces are build and not from the actual
protocol.
Our European Library portal is asynchronous because the user does not
have to wait for the last target to respond. However when this portal
accesses a Z39.50 gateway that connects to many Z39.50 targets at the
same time then we have to wait for the last target in that specific
connection or stop the search. I think this is were the misperception
comes from. Maybe it would be solved when we allow metsearch responses
(which we have not yet defined) to be received in a streaming manner.

Theo


>>> [log in to unmask] 2-3-04 19:48:16 >>>
It would be good if someone asked them why or how they perceive SRW to
be synchronous.  It isn't clear to me whether this assessment is
relative to Z39.50, which does define an asynchronous mode, concurrent
operations.  And for SRW, we had that discussion and decided not to.
Could that be what they're talking about?
--Ray

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Sanderson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 11:53 AM
Subject: Re: FW: More on SQI


> > I did send them pointers to SRW (their original draft didn't even
> > mention SRW), and I believe Ralph contacted them too - as a result
I'm
> > down as a contributor to the spec!
>
> I wrote a nice comment inviting them to come and discuss things.
We'll see
> if they do.
>
> Rob
>
> --
>       ,'/:.          Dr Robert Sanderson ([log in to unmask])
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