Re: ZNG dicussion

> > I agree with the original poster to a certain extent.  The problem
> > is not the basics but all of the layered cruft on top of them.
> > Encapsulation?  Toss. BIB1 vs EXP1 vs... Simplify. BIB2 looks very
> > good IMO.  Extended Services? Toss.  etc.
>
> The problem with this approach is that one man's cruft is another
> man's core service.  To pick just one example from your list,
> encapsulation is there because people want and in some cases need it:
> hence the discussion on this very list a week or two ago about how to
> submit a search-and-sort request in one go.

Right, which is why I picked it.

Either:  There are multiple ways of doing things with lots of code
necessary to handle them, and lots of understanding of concepts necessary
to create the code,

Or:  There is one official way to do things, with a lesser number of lines
of code to write and concepts to understand.

It seems to me that encapsulation, especially if only to make it easier to
code/understand in terms of SQL, is one of the things that could be
dropped without significant impact.

> I am opposed to _any_ approach to simplifying Z39.50 that does so by
> removing functionality.

That depends on what level you're looking at for 'functionality'.  In the
same way, it could be argued that we should be able to encapsulate search
and present in Init?  I don't see encapsulation as adding functionality,
it just extends the ways you can do the same thing.

Instead of the more wide spread Search then Sort, this is Search+Sort.
The Function is doing a search and then doing a sort, which isn't being
lost.

I'm also opposed to losing overall functionality, but would like to see
fewer and less complicated methods of getting to the end result as this
would increase the chances of interoperability.


> > > [...] these: the large number of concepts that one needs to
> > > understand in order to use Z39.50.  I call this fundamental
> > > because it is tied into [...]
> > specification.  Everyone says that there's a large number of
> > concepts, and there definitely is, perhaps we could get something
> > definite to knock around?
>
> This is an interesting idea.  Are you volunteering?  :-)

Erk. I'm not sure I'm the right person for the job, but if it was thought
to be useful, I'd certainly give it a shot? :)

Rob

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Received on Thursday, 27 September 2001 08:43:42 UTC