[OAI-implementers] question about PMH baseURLs

[Hussein Suleman]

hi folks

thanks for the quick responses.

if indeed we dont want ? characters in baseURLs, the OAI schema needs to 
be changed to use a different datatype than anyURI for the baseURL; and 
it probably needs to be made explicit in the spec.

fwiw, merging of parameter lists seemed like the right thing to do (as 
all new interoperable systems do this) but it does result in invalid PMH 
requests because the PMH is defined much more narrowly than newer standards.

so, bottom line, unless i hear otherwise, i will assume we go for ?-less 
baseURLs and i will check for this in the repository explorer in future...

ttfn,
----hussein

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


Young,Jeff (OR) wrote:
> According to the URI standard
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#section-3.4>:
> 
> "The query component is indicated by the first question mark ("?")..."
> 
> This implies that an OAI-PMH request supporting HTTP GET must have a
> baseURI without a question mark.
> 
> If the repository only accepted POST requests, then it could probably
> get away with it. Whether it should or not is another question.
> 
> Jeff
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: oai-implementers-bounces at openarchives.org
> [mailto:oai-implementers-
>> bounces at openarchives.org] On Behalf Of Hussein Suleman
>> Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 10:40 AM
>> To: oai-implementers at openarchives.org
>> Cc: Dr. Thomas Staecker
>> Subject: [OAI-implementers] question about PMH baseURLs
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>> --
>> =====================================================================
>> hussein suleman ~ hussein at cs.uct.ac.za ~ http://www.husseinsspace.com
>> =====================================================================
>>
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> 
> 
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