RE: ZNG: "Z39.50 Next Generation"

Z39.50 Classic is NOT going away!!!

There are no babies being thrown away and we're keeping all that nasty
bathwater we've been accumulating over the years.  But, we are making a new
tub that the baby can be washed in.  One with slightly cleaner water that
won't require hydraulic engineers to open the taps.

Z39.50 in ASN.1/BER over raw tcp/ip will be with us for decades.  We'll all
continue to make a little consulting money on the side explaining how to use
it.  We'll all continue to watch the rest of the world turn their noses up
at it.

It's that last point that really gripes me.  We've got a great standard and
few people outside the library community want to use it.  The need for it is
great and it certainly gets looked at; nearly everyone in the information
retrieval industry knows what it is and they know why they don't want to use
it.

ZNG is an attempt to take the strengths of Z39.50 and move them to a vehicle
that is acceptable to the rest of the world (I hope.)  It is an experiment.
It is not complete.  It is not the end of Z39.50 Classic.

Ralph


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Sanderson [mailto:azaroth@liverpool.ac.uk]
> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 4:40 AM
> To: ZIG
> Subject: Re: ZNG: "Z39.50 Next Generation"
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, Alan Kent wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:23:30PM +0100, Robert Sanderson wrote:
> > > Get your programmers who are experienced in Z to write an 
> API for your non
> > > Z programmers to use. If you chose to publish this API 
> such that others
> > > can use it, more power to you. /This/ would be a 
> productive way forward,
> > > rather than discarding bits which are complex but have 
> already been
> > > implemented by others.
> >
> > To me, this is exactly what ZNG is - a standardised web services
> > interface to Z39.50. Our product is not going to drop the core
> > Z39.50 protocol. We are going to add an alternative "web services"
> > interface allowing SOAP clients written in any language to access
> > our server easily in a way that programmers will understand.
> 
> Except that there was no mention of retaining the current Z 
> protocol along
> with ZNG.  Either:
> 
> a) It's an implementers agreement about which names to use in 
> cgi scripts
> which query real Z databases.  or:
> 
> b) There's no Z behind it, just an everyday database which 
> could be sql,
> moo or anything in between.
> 
> Either way, it's useful to people wanting to build a database 
> that can be
> queried in a standard way, but is not deserving of the 
> description 'next
> generation of Z39.50'.
> 
> > I don't see ZNG as a "replacement of Z39.50". I see it as some of
> > the vendors agreeing to a subset of Z39.50 via a SOAP based API
> > rather than each vendor developing their own proprietory API.
> 
> Quite :)  This is useful, especially if the underlying code 
> is released to
> the community as well as the specifications of how to use it.
> 
> Rob
> 
> -- 
>       ,'/:.          Rob Sanderson (azaroth@liverpool.ac.uk)
>     ,'-/::::.        http://www.o-r-g.org/~azaroth/
>   ,'--/::(@)::.      Special Collections and Archives, extension 3142
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> I L L U M I N A T I
>

Received on Monday, 16 July 2001 07:08:19 UTC