Re: RV: Welcome to Z3950FS-L

> Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 15:41:10 -0500
> From: "tatiana" <tatiana@geocuba.co.cu>
> 
> My first questions?
> 1. Weaknesses of clasic z3950 to the Web Community. I need a
> detailed explanation, more than the facts mentioned at
> srw-rac2003081(1).ppt. It is important due to both my own
> understanding and my headīs understanding.:-)
> 2. The same of question No. 1 but in regard with the strengths. Also
> well explained. In this case my additional question is as follows:

Hi Tatiana,

I'm sure you'll get plenty of replies extolling the virtues of SRW
over "old-fashioned" Z39.50, but let me present a counter-point.  It
could be said that most if not all of the _technical_ criticisms of
Z39.50 that led to the creation of SRW have been shown groundless.
Certainly as SRW has evolved from its very early drafts -- appealing
in their simplicity but not really useful for much more than demos --
into its current form, it has acquired all the complexity that Z39.50
has and arguably more.

The value of SRW lies not in anything it does better than Z39.50, but
in ease of implementation in communities where XML and HTTP are
ubiquitous.  If that's where you work, you'll find it a better match
than Z39.50 for the way you're used to working; then again, you may
find that one of the free Z39.50 client-API implementation at
zoom.z3950.org meets the need.

What it all comes down to is this: SRW and Z39.50 offer very similar
features (for the good reason that experience has shown them to be the
features that are required for serious interoperable information
retrieval applications), and you should just pick the one that best
fits (A) your implementation environment, (B) the political climate at
your place of work.

A final, crucial thing to consider is whether you are going to want
your server or client to interoperate with other people's software.
If you're just implementing a closed system, you can ignore this, but
if you want other people's clients to be able to talk to your servers
or vice versa, then you'll want to implement the protocol that's most
widely used by those other people.  At the moment, that's very likely
to be Z39.50 except in a a few specialist communities; and that's not
going to change in the next couple of years.

One more point.  If you use a toolkit that implements both Z39.50 and
SRW, then you don't even have to make a decision between the two, and
you can interoperate happily with both.  One such is Index Data's fine
YAZ toolkit (http://indexdata.com/yaz) which now seems to be used in
about 2/3 of Z39.50 implementations on the Internet.

Hope some of this is helpful.

And a very merry Christmas to all!

 _/|_	 _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <mike@indexdata.com>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "24 hours in a day ... 24 beers in a case ...
	 coincidence?" -- Steven Wright.

--
Listen to my wife's new CD of kids' music, _Child's Play_, at
	http://www.pipedreaming.org.uk/childsplay/

Received on Wednesday, 24 December 2003 05:47:25 UTC