Re: CCL proposal (quotes) --and-- New Attribute

> Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 11:28:54 +1000
> From: Alan Kent <ajk@MDS.RMIT.EDU.AU>
> 
> I therefore propose that the Z39.58 regexp attribute as currently in
> Z39.50 be corrected to be made conformant with the CCL spec as Mark
> quoted in has mail (that is, allow quotes in it). This seems the
> semantically correct solution.
> [...]
> I think its bad precedent to say "well this attribute was intended
> to support this standard, but the standard was not very friendly so
> we changed its meaning afterwards to be non-conformant."

I emphatically agree.  The world has plenty of perfectly good
pattern-matching specifications out there already, and we have access
to a fair sprinkling of them from within Z39.50 (don't forget that
BIB-1 has truncation=102, POSIX regexp).  We really don't want to be
spending our time inventing new and subtly incompatible notations.

While I'm here, may I propose a new attribute for both the BIB-1 and
utility attribute sets?  It would be a Truncation attribute in the
former, and an Expansion/Interpretation attribute in the latter,
indicating that the term is an SQL "like" expression -- that is, the
sort of pattern that appears on the right-hand-side of conditions
like:

	SELECT whatever FROM whatever WHERE field LIKE 'fruit%'

to find records where the field contains "fruit", "fruity",
"fruitbat", etc.

Thanks,

 _/|_	 _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor   <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>   www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  Never before in the history of civilization have Emperors
	 had such extensive wardrobes of new clothes.

Received on Wednesday, 8 May 2002 07:39:53 UTC