I would be in favour of allowing a post next to a get, but not replacing
it. In explain it can be expressed whether post is also supported.
Theo
>>> [log in to unmask] 14-12-2004 15:19 >>>
I notice that one of the features mentioned in the proposed Adlib base
profile is "the SRU protocol, i.e., HTTP GET/POST CGI requests".
This reminds me of a discussion I had with Adam and some other Index
Data people a few days ago: is it possible to POST an SRU request
instead of GETting it? It seems to me that it _should_ be, but there
are pragmatic reason why it might not be the best thing.
What saith the scriptures? Not very much as it turns out:
http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/zing/srw/sru.html
SRU, the Search and Retrieve URL Service, is a companion
service to SRW, the Search and Retrieve Web Service. Its
primary difference is its access mechanism: SRU is a simple
HTTP GET form of the service. The request is encoded within
the URL, much like OpenURL, in contrast to SRW where an XML
document is sent to the server.
That's all. And yet there seems no compelling reason why I should get
allowed to do:
GET
/services/l5r?operation=searchRetrieve&version=1.1&query=sword&maximumRecords=10
HTTP/1.1
Host: srw.cheshire3.org
and not:
POST /services/l5r HTTP/1.1
Host: srw.cheshire3.org
Content-length: 67
operation=searchRetrieve&version=1.1&query=sword&maximumRecords=10
Why is this important? Because of the real, imagined and
implementation-dependent limits on URL length. Les Wibberley's famous
search-terms that are 10,000-node chemical formulae are not going to
fare well under SRU-GET.
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