Re: Fw: "Z39.50 Next Generation"

> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:14:09 -0400
> From: "Johan Zeeman" <j_zeeman@hotmail.com>
>
> I am pretty unhappy at having this sprung upon us as a fait accompli
> by a really quite secretive group of implementors.  There has been
> no declaration that this group was active.  There has been no
> invitation to participate or be kept informed.

I've tried to stay out of this, but ...  :-)

To be fair to the ``ZNG Mafia'', I do feel that their agenda has been
out in the open for a long time.  At the last DC ZIG, we discussed
this work at great length, and Ray announced that the LoC would be
participating in the ZNG effort in its not-the-Maintenance-Agency
guise.  So my feeling is that ``We are familiar with these things
[...] because it was not done in a corner.'' (Acts 26:26)

That said, I would like to add my voice to the chorus registering its
bafflement at this work.  Although Ralph repeatedly reassures us that
``Z39.50 Classic is not going away'', there's no doubt that ZNG
represents a dilution of specification and implementation effort on
Z39.50 Classic.

I also strongly agree that if Ralph's position, that ZNG is an
addition to, rather than a replacement for, Z39.50 Classic, then its
name is misleading.

> There is little benefit in rolling these into a single message, and
> especially, there is no removal of any "barrier to implementation" -

Joe is spot on here.  Barriers to implementation are created not by
standards and protocols, but by toolkits and libraries.  To give just
one example, building a Z39.50 Classic client can be as simple as:

	use Net::Z3950;
	$conn = new Net::Z3950::Connection('indexdata.dk', 210,
					   databaseName => 'gils');
	$rs = $conn->search('mineral');
	print "found ", $rs->size(), " records:\n";
	my $rec = $rs->record(1);
	print $rec->render();

This uses the Perl module Net::Z3950, freely available from CPAN --
see http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tech/nz/index.html

Don't like Perl?  No problem, try Index Data's similarly high-level
PHP interface (http://www.indexdata.dk/phpyaz/) which makes it a cinch
to embed Z39.50 Classic clients in web browsers.

Or there's a Tcl/Tk interface at http://www.indexdata.dk/irtcl/ which
lets you quickly throw together GUI Z39.50 clients for X11 or
MS-Windows.

Really, the barriers to implementation remain much more barriers of
perception than of reality -- perhaps because the standard document is
so ``in your face'' with its ASN.1.  But there is no shortage of
good-quality free tools out there for those who want them.  What I
want to know is, how will ZNG make it possible to build a client
simpler than the one about?

 _/|_	 _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor - <mike@miketaylor.org.uk> - www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Unencumbered with facts as I am, I will comment" -- Drew
	 Larson in alt.folklore.computers, now the official Usenet
	 Motto.

Received on Tuesday, 17 July 2001 05:27:45 UTC