Z39.50 Searching

Dear all.

Correctly formulating a Z39.50 query that means what I think it means seems to 
be a difficult task ;-)

I was searching a certain database for documents having the 3 words 
"sicherheit", "internet", and "firewalls" in their "title" and found one hit 
with this query:
@attr 1=4 @attr 4=6 @attr 2=3 @attr 3=3 @attr 5=100 @attr 6=1 "sicherheit 
internet firewalls"

The title was sth. like "Firewalls und Sicherheit im Internet." Later on I 
found another title "Einrichten von Internet firewalls : Sicherheit im 
Internet gewährleisten" using a different search tool. At first I thought 
that the servers index no. 4 did not contain the remainder of the title, but 
I could find the additional title (together with the one found by the first 
query) with this query:
@and @and @attr 1=4 "internet" @attr 1=4 "firewalls" @attr 1=4 "sicherheit"

Now when I asked one of the developers of the server software why that was the 
case he told me that the "attr 4=6" in the first query made the difference, 
indicating that all words from the "word list" must occur in the same 
"field".

I have some questions on that with the most basic one being this: What do the 
expressions "field" and "subfield" mean concerning bib1 queries?
Since MAB puts title and remainder in different "fields" 331/335 while USMARC 
puts them in the same "field" 245 but different subfields $a/$b and a server 
probably supports both record syntaxes it would make no sense to correlate 
the two applications of the terms because there´s no way of knowing which one 
applies?!
In my eyes it would make even less sense if the "fields/subfields" from the 
standard would apply to any internal field of the database (because the user 
usually has no idea of them).

If "field" means "index" ("use"-Attrib.) here, shouldn´t then the first query 
yield all hits from both queries mentioned above? There is attr 3=3 (Position 
= any pos. in field) which IMHO should apply to all words of the word list 
separately.
If "field" means only a part of the index: what would then be the correct 
result?

Puzzled greetings
Heiko
-- 
________________________________________________
Dipl.-Bibl. Heiko Jansen
Hochschulbibliothekszentrum NRW (HBZ)
Postfach 27 04 51, 50510 Koeln, Deutschland
Telefon +49-221-40075-150, Fax +49-221-40075-190
Juelicher Str. 6, 50674 Koeln, Deutschland
jansen@hbz-nrw.de
GPG Fingerprint:
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Received on Wednesday, 15 September 2004 16:51:44 UTC