Re: Proposal: Searching XML

Hi Dan,

> BTW If folk are Web-izing Z39.50, feedback on the W3C SOAP 1.2 designs
> would be useful. I think Last Call is expected soon.

Nail down what a 'Reasonable and Non Discriminatory' Patent is in real
terms. Or it seems likely that the Open Source community won't implement
it and will just migrate to XML-RPC or other solution which /isn't/ patent
encumbered.  Preferably tell MS and IBM to jump in a lake with their RAND
licences and stay with just RF.

CNET quoted me as saying that the only thing to rain on Google's API 
parade is the 'dark cloud looming' over it of the patents on SOAP and 
WSDL and for once it's not taken out of context.

> I'd (speaking as a developer) certainly be interested in seeing this
> Searching XML proposal worked through and implemented. I'm not sure W3C
> are shopping for an IR protocol right now, but anything that bridges the
> XML mainstream technologies with Z39.50 can only be good for the digital
> library community.

Yep.  We'd implement it for sure.  On the other hand, the practical 
advantages of it aren't as high as you might expect. Unless you know what 
the data is like, you can't really send a sensible XPATH search. 
If without prior knowledge of the database, you can't send a useful XPATH 
search, then you might as well just configure enumerated access points.
(Which is what we do now, mapped to XPATH (almost) in the configfile)


Rob

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Received on Saturday, 20 April 2002 18:33:12 UTC