[OAI-implementers] custom error reporting

[Simeon Warner]

On Tue, 23 Jul 2002, Jozef Kruger wrote:
> Hello Everybody,
>  
> For the past week I've been upgrading our OAI implementation from
> version 1.1 to 2.0 and I came across a few issues.
> First of all, I understand from the protocol specs that there is no room
> for error reporting other than the predefined errors, I find this quite
> annoying, since I'd also like to report if there's for example an
> internal database error, or an error while reading the initialization
> file. I'd very much like to see the protocol be extended with some room
> for this, or if anybody else has an idea about it, please let me know.

I think database errors and such are simply outside of OAI-PMH. If your
database is not working then you do not have an OAI server. HTTP provides
appropriate error codes (say 503 Service Unavailable) and you may include
a text message with such a return which will help with debugging. You can
also return a Retry-After with some long interval (say 1 day) in the hope
that the repository operator will fix the problem in time for an
intelligent harvester to try again.

Cheers,
Simeon.