LISTSERV mailing list manager LISTSERV 16.0

Help for ZNG Archives


ZNG Archives

ZNG Archives


[email protected]


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

ZNG Home

ZNG Home

ZNG  September 2006

ZNG September 2006

Subject:

Re: New draft of Record Update

From:

Edward Summers <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

SRU (Search and Retrieve Via URL) Implementors

Date:

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 10:11:14 -0400

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (83 lines)

On Sep 29, 2006, at 5:02 AM, Rob Sanderson wrote:
> In order to create a full over-the-wire remote information system
> management protocol, there's a lot more actions required than just
> create, replace, delete.
> For example, index/unindex, cluster, classify, transform, etc. etc.
> For this, you need a lot more than the simple http verbs.

Yes, but conceivably some of these could be expressed as an update/ 
PUT. If you take the red pill and imagine an index as a resource, a  
record could be PUT to the index. New indexes could even be created  
with a POST, etc...

   curl -X PUT http://loc.gov/index < no9910609.xml

Or perhaps more interestingly (for some):

   curl http://loc.gov/no9910609 | curl -X PUT http://loc.gov/index

and some of these could possibly be seen as a representation of a  
given record or a GET

   curl http://loc.gov/no9910609/classification

As far as indexes go Brian Cassidy has actually implemented a RESTful  
webservice API to Lucene as lucene-ws [1] and the solr [2] project  
has a somewhat similar API. So I guess in a way there is room for  
another not-really-restful api :-)

> I agree that there are existing update mechanisms, and if APP (for
> example, which as Ed pointed out didn't exist when we first looked at
> Update) could fulfill the requirements, then re-inventing the  
> wheel, or
> even trying to compete, would be absolutely the wrong thing to do.   
> But
> I don't know if our community has enough traction to get the necessary
> changes made, in that regards?  I'd welcome further comments on this
> approach :)

I'm not really familiar with the requirements (especially ones like  
index, cluster, classify) so it's hard for me to say with confidence  
how well the Atom-Publishing-Protocol [3] itself would accommodate  
what you want to do in Update . I can say that:

- APP allows for records to be created, read, updated and deleted  
over HTTP.

- APP has facilities for authentication.

- APP uses HTTP status codes to return diagnostics but I would be  
surprised if most desired diagnostics could not be mapped to a class  
of HTTP status codes. The response body could be used to bundle more  
detailed diagnostics if necessary. I had to review RFC 2616 Section  
4.3 [4] to see if HTTP allowed for message bodies in error responses.

- APP is able to transport any type of XML encoded record as long as  
it's well formed.

- I'm not entirely sure how well APP would support versioning. It  
could be expressed in REST of course as a representation of a given  
record like http://loc.gov/no9910609/version/3 or somesuch.

If there is genuine interest I could look into this further and  
sketch out some examples. It's true that changing APP will be much  
more difficult than changing a zng webpage at the LoC. But even with  
APP's youthful appearance there is already an example of how to  
extend the protocol [5]--so perhaps this isn't as a huge an issue as  
you might imagine. I think the real benefit here is joining a larger  
community of developers and bridging the divide between library  
computing and the web community at large (as Ross and Mike pointed out).

A real advantage in developing a niche standard instead of using  
something like APP is security through obscurity...which probably has  
some appeal given Update's role :-)

//Ed

[1] http://lucene-ws.sourceforge.net/docs.html
[2] http://incubator.apache.org/solr/
[3] http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub- 
protocol-10.txt
[4] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt
[5] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4685.txt

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

Advanced Options


Options

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password


Search Archives

Search Archives


Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe


Archives

July 2017
October 2016
July 2016
August 2014
February 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
February 2013
January 2013
October 2012
August 2012
April 2012
January 2012
October 2011
May 2011
April 2011
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001
August 2001
July 2001

ATOM RSS1 RSS2



LISTSERV.LOC.GOV

CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager