Yakov Shafranovich writes:
 > I am working on a SRU gateway for a book publisher. One of the
 > things I have run into is that there is no way to pass pricing
 > information in SRU without using the ONIX scheme. Is there a way to
 > embed pricing information in SRU responses using other schemes?

Hi, Yakov.  Sure, you can embed whatever information you want in
records transferred via SRU, just as you can with any other XML
document.  Just add the elements you want wherever they make most
sense in the record, and be sure to put them in a namespace other than
that of the standardised part of the record.  For example:

<dc:record xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/' xmlns:mike='...'>
  <dc:identifier>12345</dc:identifier>
  <dc:creator>Hillare Belloc</mike:remitter>
  <dc:title>Poems for Bad Children</dc:title>
  <mike:price>5.99</mike:price>
</request>

The problem is: how do you get the client application to recognise and
understand the extra information you've added?  To make that work, you
need an agreement between server and client about the format of the
records -- in other words, the client needs to know that it will not
just be getting DC records, but DC-extended-with-mike:price records.

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[log in to unmask]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "A Linux system requires rebooting about as often as a Windoze
	 system requires re-installing" -- David Joffe.