[OAI-implementers] Queries and OAI

[Hussein Suleman]

hi

guess i should chip in my 2-cents' worth :)

firstly, as Michael explains, what i am working on falls strictly in the 
category of extensions. the ODL project is trying to evaluate:
- extensibility of the OAI protocol
- suitability of OAI-PMH and OAI-PMH extensions for inter-component 
communication in a componentized DL
- performance issues in networked OAI-PMH-based DLs

OAI-PMH is, and always should be, a protocol for incremental metadata 
transfer.

the whole point of our work is that a usable component model needs a 
baseline communications mechanism and some fundamental philosophies of 
design. if we can build on OAI, as something that is known, we have a 
better chance of success than if we design from scratch (etc ... read 
the paper for more :))

this is not really tied to the ETD project, though that is the first 
prototype i worked on ... the design philosophies, protocols and 
components are meant to be completely retargetable and that is being 
tested on an ongoing basis.

i will send out links, demo websites and even some downloadable software 
very soon (maybe later today). stay tuned for more details :)

ttfn
----hussein

Michael L. Nelson wrote:

> Hussein Suleman monitors this group, and its his research that the
> article discusses
> (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december01/suleman/12suleman.html), but I'll
> offer this response until he weighs in.
> 
> the example cited is most definitely an "extension" to OAI, and not part
> of the core protocol.  in fact, OAI is designed to *not* be a distributed
> search protocol, but with the wiggle room available in sets, you can make
> it behave like a distributed search protocol (among other things) if you
> really, really want.
> 
> what you should take home from your reading of their paper is that
> communities can agree on many conventions within the OAI protocol
> constructs that can result in extensions of functionality (without
> breaking the SPs and DPs that are unaware of the extensions).
> 
> in addition to exploiting community standards in sets & metadata formats,
> you can also imagine "reserved" ids for special records, conventions for
> populating namespaces in ids, mirrors & aggregators, even conventions for
> different OAI interfaces (e.g., biology.org/x/oai/ implies the existence
> of biology.org/y/oai/), etc.
> 
> Hussein's paper describes some conventions that will be presumbably used
> in the ETD project.  See also the linguistics community use of OAI in
> larger framework of metadata interchange:
> 
> http://www.language-archives.org/docs.html
> 
> regards,
> 
> Michael
> 
> On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Alan Kent wrote:
> 
> 
>>Hi. I was just reading through a DLib magazine article (Dec 2001), and
>>noticed an article talking about OAI and using set id's to put queries into.
>>The example was verb=ListIdentifiers&set=odlsearch1/computer%20science/1/10
>>
>>Is there any general work being done on such things? Or is this just an
>>individual group's idea as to one way to do things?
>>
>>I was just wondering what the intended scope of OAI was - just metadata
>>harvesting, or branching out into other areas such as searching too.
>>
>>Alan
>>_______________________________________________
>>OAI-implementers mailing list
>>OAI-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu
>>http://oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/mailman/listinfo/oai-implementers
>>
>>
> 
> ---
> Michael L. Nelson
> NASA Langley Research Center		m.l.nelson@larc.nasa.gov
> MS 158, Hampton, VA 23681		http://www.ils.unc.edu/~mln/
> +1 757 864 8511				+1 757 864 8342 (f)
> 
> 
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-- 
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hussein suleman - hussein@vt.edu - vtcs - http://www.husseinsspace.com
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