[OAI-implementers] Trying to gauge interest on two features

[Hussein Suleman]

hi

i currently also have a group of students working on a comprehensive 
SOAP-PMH case study, including development of a framework for data 
providers, service providers and testing tools (as well as a preliminary 
"rewrite" of the protocol spec). the point of our exercise is to 
illustrate the benefits of SOAP and address every conceivable issue that 
may arise in moving from PMH to SOAP-PMH (which can benefit not just 
OAI-PMH, but also other "proprietary" RPC mechanisms that wish to move 
to SOAP).

in due course (beginning of Oct) their final report will be submitted to 
the OAI for consideration.

as a preliminary answer to some of your questions, from our perspective:
- in the OAI tradition, we are using XML Schema to define SOAP requests 
and responses instead of the using the explicit type mechanism
- we are wrapping wherever possible, so responses pretty much embed 
existing OAI responses
- we are still looking into SOAP Faults vs OAI errors

fwiw, if anyone has not seen the announcement on w3.org, SOAP v1.2 just 
became a "proposed recommendation" ... just when i thought i was 
beginning to understand the old version :)

ttfn,
----hussein


zubair@cs.odu.edu wrote:
> One of my students implemented a OAI-SOAP gateway. Here is the URL if you
> are interested in looking at that.
> 
> http://www.cs.odu.edu/~rl/OAI_SOAP/gateway.html
> 
> 
> Zubair
> 
> 
> 
> 
> |--------+---------------------------------------------->
> |        |          Sandro Zic <sandro.zic@zzoss.com>   |
> |        |          Sent by:                            |
> |        |          oai-implementers-admin@oaisrv.nsdl.c|
> |        |          ornell.edu                          |
> |        |                                              |
> |        |                                              |
> |        |          05/11/2003 11:26 AM                 |
> |        |                                              |
> |--------+---------------------------------------------->
>   >---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
>   |                                                                                                   |
>   |      To:     herbert van de sompel <herbertv@lanl.gov>                                            |
>   |      cc:     OAI-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu                                             |
>   |      Subject:     Re: [OAI-implementers] Trying to gauge interest on two features                 |
>   >---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
> 
> 
> 
> 
> herbert van de sompel wrote:
> 
>>Sandro Zic wrote:
>>
>>>Has a kind of SOAP-OAI already been implemented somewhere or discussed
>>>on this
>>>list?
>>
>>When working on version 2.0 of the OAI-PMH we have decided to stick to
> 
> the HTTP
> 
>>GET approach used in versions 1.x, but have made sure that the protocol
> 
> responses
> 
>>would be SOAP-ready.  I know some OAI-implementers have done SOAP-related
>>experiments, and I guess they will reply to the list to detail such work.
> 
> With
> 
>>the OAI, we plan to create a spec for a SOAP version of the OAI-PMH, but
> 
> so far
> 
>>no concrete schedule has been set with this respect.  However, I
> 
> expect/hope that
> 
>>this work would start in the course of 2003.
> 
> 
> Actually, I am a REST advocate so I can happily live with the OAI-PMH
> approach ;) Nevertheless, SOAP and related technologies offer a broader
> variety of applicances, especially with WSDL, support of various
> protocols (HTTP, SMTP, TCP/IP, etc.), SOAP attachments, and so on.
> Hence, SOAP is better suited if you implement OAI related harvesting
> technologies in heterogenous or business environments, who very often
> follow the Web Services Hype.
> 
> I would very much be interested in best practices to implement a SOAP
> wrapper to an OAI data provider. For example:
> 
> How to pass the OAI arguments or how should the method signature look
> like? Do you prefer passing an associative array containing all
> arguments with the OAI arguments as the keys or each argument at a
> certain place in the method signature?
> 
> What does a remote procedure call return? Simply the complete OAI
> response as a string? A struct with the OAI header split to several
> values and e.g. the metadata from a getRecord() call in another
> parameter of the struct?
> 
> How about integrating OAI error responses and SOAP faults?
> 
> Thanks for any feedback,
> Sandro
> 
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-- 
=====================================================================
hussein suleman ~ hussein@cs.uct.ac.za ~ http://www.husseinsspace.com
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