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21 April 2005
Is XML really a standard?
Posted by Richard Wallis at April 21, 2005 12:25 PM
The Shifted Librarian writes, from a somewhat frustrated point of view, on using the XML enabled backend to her Innovative catalogue to "just build what I want"
I?m sometimes told that III has an XML backend so I should just be able to build what I want on my own. Of course, my first response (of many) is that I?m not a programmer so I can?t just build what I want, but Casey Bisson at Plymouth State University is, and he?s trying to build weird and wonderful things with his own Innovative catalog.She quotes Casey:
...their XML schema is non-standard, is even more difficult to work with than MARC, and is prone to parsing errors. So here we have an ILS vendor that claims to have an XML backend you can do whatever you want with, except that it?s incredibly difficult to do whatever you want with it, especially if you want to do something nutty like integrate your catalog?s content into your university?s way cool portal...So, if her interpretation is correct, here is a classic example of "encoding your data using a standard, such as XML, does not necessarily make it 'standard' data"
Exposing the catalogue encoded in XML is a powerful first step to enabling integration, but if the schema for that data is non-standard and difficult for people unfamiliar with the inner workings of the catalogue to work with, it is about as much use as a chocolate tea pot.
The wide distribution of library functionality into non-library system interfaces is becoming an unstoppable trend. Which in its self gives rise to many none technical issues I discuss here. The implementers of these interfaces will in general have zero understanding of the inner workings of a library catalogue [why should they], and most likely will not have the time or inclination to get their head around library domain search protocols such as SRU, SRW, Z39.50, OpenURL, etc.
I suspect that in the none to distant future one of the most oft repeated statements in integration discussions will be "Give me the url for your OpenSearch Description Document and I'll have it integrated in a jiffy!".
Why OpenSearch? Well it [clearly has the potential to become] a de facto simple search standard, and most importantly it is simple. Simple to understand, and simple to implement. I challenge anyone, who can read XML, to be able to construct an OpenSearch search against our Talis Prism OPAC demonstrator in the address bar of their favorite browser within a few minutes of looking at the url element of our OpenSearch Description Document. OK the results come back as RSS 'items', but any implementer worth their salt will soon have those appearing in your portal.
Thats what I mean by standard XML, even though OpenSearch has not, as yet, ventured anywhere near a standards organization.
If Library Systems get the reputation for being difficult to integrate with, the portal implementers will end up bypassing them. It is up to the industry both individually and in groups such as VIEWS to do something about it. We at Talis intend to play our part in this.
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» XML Isn't Enough from MaisonBisson.com
A lot of this is in of my XML Server presentation at the Innovative Users Group conference in a couple weeks...
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» Innovative XML Server - Documentation from ebyblog
I’ve worked with a lot of Open Source software so I’m used to documentation that is lacking, but for a commercial product I have to say that the Innovative XML server has some of the worst I’ve seen. I’ve managed to create an O... [Read More]
Tracked on June 27, 2005 04:46 AM
