> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:22:02 -0500
> From: "LeVan,Ralph" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > > Currently SRW has pride of place, as it was expected that SRW would
> > > be at least as frequently implemented as SRU, which turns out not to
> > > be the case.
> >
> > No indeed.
>
> Sorry, I let this comment go by once, but need to react.

:-)

> My experience is that SRW is significantly more efficient than SRU.
> (I've got a paper on the subject in progress.)

I'll be interested to see this.

> In java, you have to make a new URL for every SRU transaction.  That
> turns out to be expensive.  Running it over SRW lets the URL be
> reused and was considerably more efficient.

I think this is a red herring.  So far as HTTP (1.1) is concerned, one
is at liberty to reuse the same TCP/IP connection for a sequence of
HTTP requests, so there is no fundamental performance hit involved in
issuing multiple SRU requests against a single server.  You seem to be
saying that the particular Java library you're using for HTTP GET is
badly written and doesn't take advantage of this ability; but that is
a weak reason to criticise the _protocol_.  People for whom SRU
performance is an issue should just get (or write) a better
implementation.

> Switching from the SOAP toolkit to hand-built SOAP messages resulted
> in yet more efficiency.

Ah, you ended up doing that, too, then?  :-)

> I suspect I'll be bringing up the topic of SOAP in document mode
> instead of RPC mode before too long.

Ah ...  Then we'll be cookin' with gas.  If I understand rightly, that
would allow us to reintroduce asynchronous (server-originated) packets
such as Access Control from Z39.50 -- right?

 _/|_    _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <[log in to unmask]>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "These lions you saw.  Did they ... eat ants?" / "Yes,
         that's right." / "No, those weren't lions you saw.  They were
         anteaters" -- Monty Python's Flying Circus.

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