> To what degree are SRU client and server implementations expected to be
> combined into the same application?

That depends entirely on the application.  My server has a client
implementation to act as an ingest routine (eg give it a search, it runs
it and puts the records into its own database)  But this is a harvesting
model rather than a metasearch model -- change the handler and it works
for OAI in the same way.

> Put another way, should my SRU implementations expect HTTP user agents
> to be able to transform XML with XSLT?

I don't think it should care one way or the other.  You also can't ensure
that even if the agent does understand the xsl header that it will
actually use it.  But so long as you generate a correctly formed response,
it's not your problem how the client may choose to display it.


> My problem with this implementation is it assumes the HTTP user-agent
> knows how to transform XML.

I think that's a fundamental of the protocol.  The client must be able to
do something with the XML response, otherwise why did it request it?

> Furthermore, not all HTTP user-agents are intended to display XHTML.
> Some user-agents are intended to grab RSS or OAI data. Alternatively, if

I don't see what bearing this has on SRW/U?  Why would anyone point an RSS
aggregator at an SRU server and expect it to work?

> I want to disseminate the results of searches against my index via
> email, then a different transformation, as well as input, will be
> necessary. (I will need an email address.)

Yes.  You might want to create an extension whereby the user can give the
email address in a parameter.  Equally you might want to only allow
registered users to access this function, rather than spamming random
email addresses out of the blue :)


> What do y'all think?

Separating server and client is definitely the way to go :)

Rob

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