- From: Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>
- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 11:21:40 +0100
- To: www-zig@w3.org
Sorry to arrive at this discussion about nine years late, but as I come to integrate contributed Scan code into the Net::Z3950 Perl module, I've been carefully reading what the on-line Z39.50 standard says about Scan, and there seem to be a couple of mistakes or ambiguities. I have no idea whether these issues are reflected in Z39.50-2003, as the HTML on the site is still from the 1995 version. In section 3.2.91 (Scan Service), towards the bottom of the page http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/markup/05.html Table 12 shows the parameters of the Scan request and response. The "Number-of-entries" parameter is listed as being in the response, but not the request; but the below indicates that it is in both: 3.2.8.1.4 Number-of-entries. The origin indicates the proposed number of entries to be returned. The target indicates the actual number of entries returned. If the actual number is less than the proposed number, the reason is indicated in Scan-status. And the ASD.1 at http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/asn1.html#ScanRequest confirms this. The ScanResponse ASN.1 at http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/asn1.html#ScanResponse includes a parameter attributeSet [8] IMPLICIT AttributeSetId which does not seem to be documented in the prose. What is this? What the heck is suggestedAttributes all about? The prose says: A list of suggested attributes for use in subsequent Scan requests (useful for scanning multiple indices, e.g. author and title, at the same time). but that doesn't clarify things much for me. Why is alternativeTerm a SEQUENCE OF AttributesPlusTerm rather than just a single AttributesPlusTerm? Both the name of the ASN.1 element and the prose ("A suggested alternative term.") are clear that a single term is expected here. Has anyone, ever, in the history of the universe, implemented OccurrenceByAttributes? :-) _/|_ _______________________________________________________________ /o ) \/ Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk )_v__/\ How hard can _that_ be? -- Listen to my wife's new CD of kids' music, _Child's Play_, at http://www.pipedreaming.org.uk/childsplay/
Received on Wednesday, 28 April 2004 06:22:04 UTC