RE: Proposal: Searching XML

> > Can't we do that now by giving a URI in elementSetNames which refers
to
> an
> > XSLT style sheet, rather than dumping potentially very long
stylesheets
> > dynamically at the server for every request?  For retrieval
purposes,
> > specifying a style sheet and specifying a schema for the record to
be
> > returned in result in the same outcome -- you get the record in a
> certain
> > format.
> 
> Seems sensible. For the paranoid amongst us, passing in a sha1 or md5
hash
> of the XSLT sheet might help the server decide whether the XSLT was
safe
> to run. Creeping featurism though :)

I was going to say that there was an issue about ensuring that the xsl
wasn't tampered with in transit especially if the xsl was stored on a
third party server (i.e. could have changed since you wrote the client
etc.)...

In addition, ut of course wo'n't apply if the client needs to send a XSL
transform based on user request (unless the client can also act as a web
server), and wo'n't apply if the Z39.50 server cannot access the URI
concerned (e.g. if it is behind a firewall which only allows z39.50
traffic and not outgoing web requests).

In some ways the above is only of benefit if the URI's are from a list
of XSLT's explicitly supported by the server (i.e. are stored or cached
on the server). This certainly gets around the problem of sending
arbitrary XSL scripts to the server - on the other hand isn't much
better than named eSpecs such as 'B' or 'F' (apart from you maybe able
to look at the XSLT to work out what you will get, which is an
improvement over the current 'B' eSpec)

Matthew

Received on Monday, 22 April 2002 07:55:00 UTC