ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING Geneva, June 2005 Ole Husby, BIBSYS

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING ZING defined Z I nternational N ext G eneration: 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

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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)

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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".

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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...

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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"

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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...

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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...

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING please use it! Save you're own time Do it properly Keep it updated Post it on the web Zeerex is human readable!

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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!

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING 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 -> XML/WSDL) –transport technology (sockets -> HTTP) –encoding technology (BER -> XML) Tools / gateways / proxies are needed for migrating as well as coexisting

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING

Z-server Z-proxy SR-proxy Metasearch Portals Personal Zclients SR-server Different scenarios

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING Z-proxy SR-server First step

ELAG 2005 / Workshop 1: ZING SR-server Next step