[OAI-implementers] question about PMH baseURLs

[Hussein Suleman]

hi

a protocol specification issue: can we have a baseURL that includes a 
"?" character (see email below from Thomas Staecker).

personally, it seems reasonable to me. the schema says anyURI for 
Identify response, which makes it valid. but the PMH narrative says that 
in order to create a request a harvester can append "?" and a 
"&"-separated parameter list to the baseURL. this causes a bit of a 
contradiction.

so, should the narrative of the PMH be changed to allow baseURLs with 
existing embedded parameters? all harvesters will then need to be aware 
of this and check for existing parameters if they are not already doing 
this.

other interoperable Web-based systems (Facebook, Sakai) already do this 
quite seamlessly. from our perspective, is a minor change for consistent 
HTTP usage worth the possible need for change to harvesters?

thoughts?

ttfn,
----hussein


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: oai Repository Explorer
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:55:41 +0200
From: Dr. Thomas Staecker <staecker at hab.de>
To: hussein at cs.uct.ac.za

Hello,

I tried to check our OAI interface against your checker, but it didn't
work because your checker assumes that there is a plain base URL. But as
we host two repositories at the moment we decided to put the base URLs
as follows: http://dbs.hab.de/oai/?repository=WDB_OPAC and
http://dbs.hab.de/oai/?repository=VKK. Your checker now tries to resolve
this URL as follows
http://dbs.hab.de/oai/?repository=WDB_OPAC?verb=Identify which leads to
an error due to the double questionmark. Is it possible to avoid the
second questionmark?

Regards,
Thomas




-- 
Dr. Thomas Staecker (Leiter Abteilung Alte Drucke, Digitalisierung)
Herzog August Bibliothek - Postfach 1364 - D-38299 Wolfenbuettel
Tel. +49(0)5331/808-119 - email: staecker at hab.de


-- 
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hussein suleman ~ hussein at cs.uct.ac.za ~ http://www.husseinsspace.com
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