RE: ZNG: "Z39.50 Next Generation"

Ralph,

> 
> ZNG: Make the URL, send it and get the response (done with these six lines
> of Java code: URLConnection uc= new URLConnection(new URL(
> "http://www.firstsearch.oclc.org/WorldCat/recordSchema=DublinCore?isbn=12345
> "));
> int reclen=uc.getContentLength(); InputStream is=uc.getInputStream(); byte[]
> buf=new byte[reclen]; while((len=is.read(buf, offset, buf.length-offset))>0)
> offset+=len; is.close(); )
> Give the response to the XML record handling utility and get the title.

I'm sorry, to me you are simply discarding all semantic aspects for the
sake that programmer cant be bothered to learn the protocol.

There are enough toolkits out there in C or JAVA or PERL etc to make life
much simpler than worring about indefinitel length BER !!

And besides your 6 lines of code are OK so long as it works - what
about when:
- someone at management wants to authenticate this,

- the URL is incorrectly formed for whatever reason and you need to start
introducing error management

- you cant get a connection - more error management,

- the response is incorrectly formed etc

- you give it an unknown isbn - yet more diags and error management

and so on - I guess your 6 lines of code gets somewhat maginfied - and
magnified in a fashion not dissimilar with dealing with error situations
and diagnostics in Z39.50. 

> We've been developing Z39.50 utilities here at OCLC for more than ten years
> now and have considerable expertise in the area.  But we constantly have
> problems trying to explain how to do this to our programmers.  The new way
> to do it is trivial and uses standard tools that we expect all programmers
> to understand.

and in 5 years time you will be in the same situation as now because the
programmers then will have moved on to new technology of that time and
wont understand ZNG. Its a fact of life.

Rob

Received on Friday, 13 July 2001 12:51:20 UTC