Re: DASL / GILS alignment

Ian said this:
> 
> All that said, when I first got hold of  the DASL specification my first
> thought was great... We can gateway DASL onto our z39.50 search service and
> provide an easy to use service. Everything considered, this reminds me of the
> ZORBA debate, maybe also the whois++ debate... At the end of the day z39.50 is
> about information retrieval. It matters not a jot if it's BER encoded ASN,
> CORBA IDL, or maybe even XML encoded ASN, what the "protocol" represents the
> current-best-practice in distributed information retrieval. We will always be
> up against it when trying to trade-off "Simple" UI's against complex
> requirements. For me, the solution to this problem lies with AI & NLP, but
> until that technology is polished it's a dangerous step to discard z39.50 all
> together. It's ability to absorb a wide variety of IR problems makes it
> invaluable as a tool for exposing a resource. By all means lets use DASL to
> access a z39.50 service, but to cut it out altogether? After all, you can
> always "hide" the features of a complex protocol, but when you need a richer
> feature set, you can't use a facility if it is not present in a "simple"
> protocol.

Exactly, with the minor added point that if you are in the specification
phase of the simple protocol and you start looking at some of the
areas that Z39.50 has already explored, you run the very great risk
of attempting to solve problems that already have a solution.

DASL has to be very careful with its scope. Apparently DASL doesn't
need any changes in order to support GILS. The tendency then might be to
tackle other traditional Z39.50 domains. If it can be done without expanding
DASL's scope then fine. But lets not try and recreate Z39.50 in DASL just
so we can get it into the HTTP stream...

-MM

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
Sr. Research Engineer   |   www.ga.lp.org/gwinnett     | ICQ#:         14198821
Network Solutions	|          www.lp.org          |  michaelm@netsol.com

Received on Thursday, 28 January 1999 10:09:59 UTC