Re: Betr.: Retrieving XML

> The subject gradually changed from searching XML to retrieving XML.

> As far as it concerns retrieving XML why not do it the SRU/SRW way.
> There we also will have a limited number of recordSchemas and it would
> be preferable to keep the Z39.50-XML record schemas identical to the
> SRU/SRW record schemas.

Because clients may wish the server to format the XML in a certain way 
which is peculiar to the client.  For example I might want all the fields 
discarded except for the identifier so that I can construct z39.50r URLs.

> As far as it concerns sending stylesheets: when a client gets the XML it
> can do the XSLT translation itself. I do not see the need of sending the
> stylesheet. We have a SRU client that is a complete portal for

Thin clients may not have this capacity.  Equally the client could ask for 
it in MARC and transform it into the desired XML. Or even easier from 
GRS1.  

If the server is going to be able to transform the data into a certain 
XML Schema, then we might as well let it also transform the data with a 
stylesheet.  Potentially if the stylesheet is known it can go from its 
internal representation into the stylesheet directly.

Hence my suggestion of a URI rather than everyone potentially sending the 
same style sheet over and over again with no way to tell it apart from any 
other except via inspection. 

Rob


> >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.
> 
> Giving the URI as opposed to shipping the StyleSheet is arguably a 
> simplification, although it does force the Z39.50 server to act as a HTTP 
> client, and it requires the stylesheet to be available somewhere public.
> 
> But again, it makes no sense to give the server a stylesheet unless you 
> also have a way of telling the server what schema you expect the data to be 
> in *at the beginning* of the transformation.
> 
> You gotta say: "I would like this data in Schema X and *THEN* apply 
> stylesheet Y to it. Otherwise, you're always relying on the server to make 
> data available in one specific schema."
> 
> I think we need CompSpec for this... that allows you to give the schema. 
> Then we just need a convention for using a stylesheet as an alternative to 
> Espec-1.
> 
> --Sebastian
> --
> Sebastian Hammer, Index Data <http://www.indexdata.dk/>
> Ph: +45 3341 0100, Fax: +45 3341 0101
> 
> 

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      ,'/:.          Rob Sanderson (azaroth@liverpool.ac.uk)
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Received on Monday, 22 April 2002 08:56:08 UTC