ZNG

After attending the latest ZIG meeting and having seen the specifications so far for ZNG, I must say that I am very pleased with the ZNG initiative.

At the KB we have now implemented ZNG based on the prototype WDSL definition (except that the requesting url is a http GET and not SOAP and the record schema is not yet Dublin Core). I have some suggestions that might be considered useful.

1) The response on a search is now always a result-set. I would see it as an improvement when a searchRetrieveResponse  can be as well a result-set as a scan-list or the result of a fuzzy search and and can be extended even more. In the case of no hits a target can send these other responses with specificly being requested for it.

2) For web-developers it is convenient to add parameters in the url that can be used for some kind of session context and it is useful when these parameters are returned by the targets as tags in the searchRetrieveResponse.  

3) As a special case of the item above, it might be convenient when the target returns the actual query as a tag in the result-set. It makes applications much more robust when the response is completely self-containing and there is less need for keeping session-context.

4) Some targets have a limit on the size of a resultset and it would be convenient if that size is returned as part of the result-set


With regards,
Theo van Veen

Koninklijke Bibliotheek 
The Netherlands

Received on Tuesday, 16 October 2001 04:23:03 UTC