>> I disagree. The amount of complexity in Z39.50 for searching
>> multiple databases at once was a serious impediment to
>> implementation, and the same will apply to SRW.
> What extra complexity? Extend the database-name syntax to allow
> lists, add a what-database-the-record-is-from element to the result
> record, bam, you're done.
Explain?
Scan?
Databases that don't have common record schemas?
Databases without common indexes?
Databases without common (insert favourite SRW functionality here) ?
X databases that do exist, along with one that doesn't ?
Putting it in the URL might work for SRU, but is less likely to be
implementable for SRW, so it probably would need to be a new parameter to
each request.
Splitting the result sets by database, vs sorting them all together
somehow would mean radically changing the <records> structure. The
headaches we have with sort at the moment would be compounded across
multiple databases.
There'll be a huge bunch more diagnostics too.
Oh man...
For new protocol MetaSRW 1.0 I'd agree with it, but not SRW 2.0 and
especially not for 1.2. Doubly especially not without some sort of agreed
upon mechanism that had already been implemented (one of our guide stones
for what to include in a future version to avoid feeping creatures...)
Rob
,'/:. Dr Robert Sanderson ([log in to unmask])
,'-/::::. http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~azaroth/
,'--/::(@)::. Dept. of Computer Science, Room 805
,'---/::::::::::. University of Liverpool
____/:::::::::::::.
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