Hello,

I am helping to maintain the entries for SRW/SRU in the JISC standards 
catalogue - these are very brief overviews of a range of standards. 
Here is the online version 
http://standards.jisc.ac.uk/catalogue/Home.phtml but this version is 
being revised and updated.  I have not been paying very close attention 
to this list so I wanted to check that my revisions to the entries had 
not missed any landmark changes.  I also have a couple of questions 
questions about SRW.  I'm copying my entries as they will appear in the 
revised version below for your comments - note the level of detail is 
intended to be the same as for other standards, and not a comprehensive 
review.  Regarding SRW, I wondered if there was any sort of formal 
statement of its status that I could refer to, and whether there was a 
webpage more specific to SRW that I could link to?  The links that I had 
no longer work.

I would be grateful if you would let me know if I have got anything very 
wrong or if you have other suggestions.

Thanks for your time,
Monica Duke (UKOLN)

  Entry
     SRU
========================
Area
     Search Protocols

Standard
     Search and Retrieve URL Service (SRU) is a REST-based protocol for 
querying databases and returning search results. Client requests are 
encoded as name/value pairs in the query string of a URL and transmitted 
via HTTP GET requests. The results of SRU requests are XML documents.

Standardisation
     The SRU Editorial Board, assisted by the SRU Steering Committee and 
the SRU Implementor's Group manage the standard and its revisions. The 
SRU Maintenance Agency is currently the Library of Congress.

Versions
     The current version of SRU is 1.2; the previous version was 1.1; 
version 1.0 was an experimental version and has been officially deprecated.

Maturity
     Version 1.2 has been released and web pages for its documentation 
are available. A OASIS Search Web Services Technical Committee has been 
launched. SRU Version 1.2 will be input to that process, which will 
(hopefully) result in SRU version 2.0.

Risk Assessment
     The focus of development has concentrated on SRU due to the 
perception that the SRU approach is more likely to find take-up than the 
related SOAP-based standard, SRW.

Take-up Elsewhere
     Implementors, implementations, tools and servers are listed on the 
Resources section of the SRU website 
http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/resources/

Further Information

     * Search/Retrieve via URL http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/

  Entry
     SRW
=======================
Area
     Search Protocols

Standard
     Search and Retrieve Web Service (SRW) is a Web Services-based 
protocol for querying databases and returning search results. Client 
requests and server responses are encapsulated as SOAP messages.

Standardisation

The SRU Editorial Board, assisted by the SRU Steering Committee and the 
SRU Implementor's Group manage the standard and its revisions. The SRU 
Maintenance Agency is currently the Library of Congress.

Versions
     The current version of SRW is 1.1; version 1.0 was an experimental 
version, and has been officially deprecated.

Maturity

Risk Assessment

Standardisation efforts have shifted to SRU due to the perception that 
SOAP-based approaches like SRW are less likely to find take-up than SRU. 
SRW does not appear to be actively maintained any longer and is no 
longer listed directly in the Library of Congress pages for SRU, but 
some implementations and tools and the schema are available.

Take-up Elsewhere

Implementors, implementations, tools and servers are listed on the 
Resources section of the SRU website 
http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/resources/

Further Information

     * Search and Retrieve Web Service http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/ 
A section dedicated to SRW no longer exists, the mailing list would be 
the best place to direct queries.