I agree with Matthew's reticence to elaborate SRW just now in anticipation
of needs that have not been expressed. We need to listen to the real
problems of potential implementers at this stage. Shouldn't we be working
on browse (BRW?) and defining a take up strategy?
Janifer
-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew J. Dovey [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 22 July 2003 13:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: xPath in searchRequest
Mike,
In Z39.50 we have a lot of complex machinery that is hardly (or sometimes
never) used. Mainly because we would introduce some additional functionality
(sometimes quite complex - e.g. qSpec) to solve a particular problem in one
particular applicaiton, which no-one else needed or subsequently used, or in
some causes to solve a hypothetical problem which no-one has actually
encountered.
The result *is* a powerful and versatile spec. but also a complex and
potentially confusing spec. for new comers.
With SRW I'm more in favour of keeping it simple - I'm not against adding
new stuff if it really *is* needed to solve a *real* problem. I'm not
particularly happy to add stuff just because it can do clever stuff that
might solve a future undefined problem.
Anyway, in this case it isn't that I want to prevent people from putting up
such a server - just that it seems a particularly silly thing to do and not
particularly useful.
Matthew
________________________________
From: Z39.50 Next-Generation Initiative on behalf of Mike Taylor
Sent: Tue 22/07/2003 10:00
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: xPath in searchRequest
> Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 08:09:09 +0100
> From: "Matthew J. Dovey" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>> It's not just EAD though. There's no restriction in SRW that you
>> can't use it for only short metadata records... Imagine someone
>> with (say) full text journal articles. Or full texts of entire
>> books. Or SVG even? Search through complex structures and return
>> instances of circles. (or whatever SVG primitives are like)
>
> But is this a real application? Would someone really put up an SRW
> server which when I search for Shakespeare would return the
> full-text of books which mention Shakespeare?
Who knows what wonderful and weird things people will come up with?
Our job in designing a protocol is to provide mechanisms to let
implementors do what they wish, and not to mandate or even imply
policy. Let's not preclude _any_ uses of SRW merely on the grounds
that we don't happen to want to use it that way today.
_/|_ _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/ Mike Taylor <[log in to unmask]> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\ "Found New Hardware. Please connect to Internet to download
drivers for Device: PCI Modem and for Device: Ethernet card"
- Windows XP.
--
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