Searching your web pages

[Marc Salomon]

|Other freeWAIS versions exist for other platforms.  I'm loking forward to
|the release of a Z39.50 version 3 server that is as easy to implement as
|freeWAIS, but meanwhile you don't need a team of programmers and gurus to be
|standards compliant.

WAIS variants do not speak compliant Z39.50-1992 (v2) or 1995 (v3-in ballot
now), rather a partial subset of the expired 1988 (v1) specification.  Even
most all current implementations of the current spec have not implemented the
optional explain function (these implementations are not complete but
compliant), one that is key in lowering the bar for widespread deployment as
explain will allow servers to more fully negotiate queries with clients.

But Z39.50 standards compliance is more than having a server that speaks the
protocol.  You can issue all the type-1 queries you want, but if the indexing
behind the search engine doesn't match up to peer Z servers, servers that serve
similar content, then you are compliant in providing non-normalized, irregular
information.

If you have a stateless Z39.50-1992 server operating over a full-text index of
your web pages, then you are adding complexity (implementation and support) to
your system that does not get leveraged to the distributed information
retrieval potential of Z39.50

Standards are essential, but if standards are a hammer, let's remember that all
problems are not nails.

-marc

-- 
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// Marc Salomon - Software Engineer - Innovative Software Systems Group     \\ 
\\ Library and Center for Knowledge Management - UC, San Francisco          // 
// phone :  415.476.9541 - e-mail : marc at ckm.ucsf.edu - fax: 415.476.4653   \\
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