[OAI-implementers] Requesting a part of a record possible wit h OAI-OMH?

[Pete Johnston]

Hussein said:

> it looks most interesting ... here are some thoughts:
> 
> - your descriptions are for an independent external registry, while i 
> was proposing a "friends"-like services offered on the same 
> archive. as such, "title" would be a moot point, while you (rightly)
require it.

Yes, I don't think Andy was proposing a separate external service a la
JISC IESR (which I should add is still very much just at the pilot
stage!), but rather suggesting that the "service description" that might
be embedded in the OAI-PMH Identify response might be kept to a very
minimal DC-based record that included a pointer to richer details
provided using existing specs/standards.

I should add that (as an occasional but not terribly prompt or timely
adviser to the IESR project) I have an outstanding action against me to
explore some of the elements of that service description schema to see
whether some of the "proprietary" aspects might be represented using
WSDL.

> - your service identifiers are assigned by a central 
> authority - with a 
> self-description, that should not be necessary (and may even violate 
> some information independence principles)
> 
> - you do not have a formal identifier for the protocol and i 
> think that is quite important to match clients and servers for
services. i was 
> suggesting the canonical URI of the protocol specification. 

Well, except in so far as they are drawn from the controlled list here

http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/profile/vocabs/#AccMthdList

in which each of those values could be assigned a URI. But at the
moment, you're right, I don't think they are, and I agree it would be
better to use global "canonical" URIs for the protocols. Those URIs
might or might not be the URL of a human-readable spec though.

My memory of the WSDL specs is a bit hazy, but I think they use XML
QNames (rather than URIs) to identify/reference what they call
"bindings"?

> if someone 
> comes up with a new CGI-based protocol, they SHOULD have a 
> specification written down somewhere, otherwise i don't see the point
of 
> advertising the interface publicly.

I'd pretty much agree with that, I think.

> - WSDL is tricky. did you use the draft spec or the technical note? 
> there are encoding differences between the two, so until this 
> becomes a standard, i am keeping my distance.

Ah... not sure! I'd have to check! ;-)

Pete
------- 
Pete Johnston 
Research Officer (Interoperability)
UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK 
tel: +44 (0)1225 383619    fax: +44 (0)1225 386838 
mailto:p.johnston@ukoln.ac.uk 
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/p.johnston/