Re: Z39.50 on the web (and in print)

Ashley Sanders wrote:

> Does not real Explain already have a F&N feature -- Surrogate
> Explain Databases as described by Denis Lynch ...

Good point. The explain definition was developed with the intention of
explaining a single server (the one where the Explain database resides). The
idea of a surrogate explain server was sort of a last minute add-on, an
afterthought. Nevertheless it's a reasonably sound approach, it seems to me.

It works roughly like this: there is a well-known database that explains the
local server, but other databases (that is, with names different from the
well-known database explain-1) can reside at that server too.  The way to
discover them is to search the well-known database, explain-1, for database info
records, and the ones that correspond to surrogate databases have a flag. See
3.2.10.3.2, second bullet. Or look at the ASN.1 for Explain, DatabaseInfo,
'explainDatabase'.  You'll note that if we want to exploit this feature to do
what we're talking about, it would require a bit more specificity, but the hook
is there.

--Ray

Received on Friday, 22 February 2002 12:09:03 UTC