Geneva, June 2005

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• Geneva, June 2005
• Ole Husby, BIBSYS

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Participants

• Susanna Peruginelli, Italy
• Ere Maijala, Finland
• Maja Žumer, Slovenia
• Petra Otten, Netherlands
• Dan Matei, Romania
• Juha Hakala, Finland
• Tor Arne Dahl, Norway
• Jack Bazuzi, Spain
• Graham Tritt, Switzerland
• (Peter Noerr, USA)
• Ole Husby, Norway

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ZING defined

• Z39.59 International Next Generation
• SRU Search and Retrieve URL Service
• SRW Search and Retrieve Web Service
• CQL Common Query Language
• ZOOM The Z39.59 Object-Orientation Model
• Zeerex Z39.50 Explain, Explained and
  Re-engineered in XML
• ez3950 Simple Implementation of Z39.50 over
  SOAP Using XER

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Agenda

• NISO Metasearch Initiative
• SRU/SRW vs related initiatives
• SRU vs SRW vs SRUP
• CQL
• zeeRex
• New services
• Migrating from Z29.50 to SRU/SRW
• Toolkits
• (Not on the agenda
• ZOOM
• ez3950
• Google)

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NISO metasearch initiative

• TG1 Access management
• surveying practice
• recommending
• TG2 Collection description (Juha Hakala)
• collection description
• service description
• TG3 Search and retrieve (Peter Noerr)
• initiative from content providers metasearch
  engines are behaving improperly

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More on NISO MSI TG3

• Building a reference model for metasearching (use
  cases, diagrams)
• Scope transferring searches to and from
  metasearch engines
• Main problem with SRU/SRW CQL is too complex
  (for some)
• Content providers need something cheap or
  commercially favorable

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MXG a new protocol?

• MXG NISO Metasearch XML Gateway Protocol
• A NISO MSI proposal for a lightweight protocol
• Level 1 Minimal query URL requirements
• Level 2 Add XML record requirements
• Level 3 Add minimal CQL requirements
• Try to get people on the ladder at level 1

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Further work on MXG

• Discuss at ZING meeting later this month
• Potentially submit for NISO registration
• BTW SRU/SRW has been submitted for NISO
  registration
• Recommendation Try to avoid treating SRU/SRW and
  MXG as parallel (competing) tracks within NISO

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Other related initiatives

• OpenURL is not a search protocol, it is not
  designed as such and should not be
• OAI-PMH is related to SRU/SRW by
• also returning record metadata
• also requiring XML
• Recommendation There is a basis for aligning the
  tasks of profiling record metadata schemas within
  SRU/SRW and OAI-PMH

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more related initiatives

• Xpath/Xquery not a search protocol
• RSS not a search protocol
• OpenSearch (amazon.com) "something to do with
  searching, harvesting, syndication". NISO MSI
  should look into this?
• OpenOffice Bibliographic project "looks like a
  reference management system. It is not a search
  protocol".

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SRU vs SRW (vs SRUP)

• SRU HTTP GET
• (SRUP HTTP POST without SOAP
• SRUP is probably deprecated)
• SRW HTTP POST with SOAP
• Recommendation Please implement both in the
  server.
• same recommendation as last year ...

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SRU issues

• SRU does not require a client could run in the
  browser
• The URL length problem in HTTP get is not trivial
• See the workshop reports from last year for a
  more detailed treatment

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CQL issues

• Documentation Some more clarity is asked for
  Explanations, examples, pointers to external
  definitions
• Important implementors guide CQL Index-naming
  Convention, e.g.
• "attempt to determine if a suitable index name
  already exists ... and if so, use it rather than
  creating a new index name"

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CQL next version

• (part of SRU/SRW v 1.2 or 2.0)
• Most important issue notion of conformance
  levels (0, 1 and 2)
• Recommendation Align the XMG levels with the CQL
  levels, e.g. by XMG referring CQL
• We do accept the difference in scope between the
  metasearch initiative and the SRW standardizing
  community, but ...

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ZeeRex

• An abstract schema as well as XML schema
• To be used
• by Z39.50 servers
• by SRU/SRW servers
• by posting XML files on the web
• Feedback on Zeerex coming from the NISO MSI TG2
• Our guess none of the metasearch portals are
  actually using it ...

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please use it!

• Save you're own time
• Do it properly
• Keep it updated
• Post it on the web
• Zeerex is human readable!

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New services

• One reason for extending SRU/SRW by adding new
  services
• Closing the gap between Z39.50 and SRU/SRW so a
  complete migration is possible
• Candidates
• Update (Z39.50 ext. services UCP profile)
• Resource delivery (Z39.50 ext. services Item
  Order)
• but we have no recommendations!

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Migration toolkits

• We believe there will be a migration from Z39.50
  to SRU/SRW (but slowly)
• And we applaud it!
• Main reasons are related to
• service specifications (ASN.1 -gt XML/WSDL)
• transport technology (sockets -gt HTTP)
• encoding technology (BER -gt XML)
• Tools / gateways / proxies are needed for
  migrating as well as coexisting

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(No Transcript)
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Personal Zclients
Different scenarios
Z-server
SR-proxy
SR-server
Z-proxy
Metasearch Portals
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First step
SR-server
Z-proxy
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Next step
SR-server