FW: [WEB4LIB] Z39.50

[Matthew Dovey]

There is a general feeling that many issues with Z39.50 are marketing the standard rather than flaws in the standard itself! 

For example Z39.50 defines a "service definition" i.e. what should be sent over the wire, but not how it should be formatted on the wire. The current (and often regarded archaic, although all the certificate/security people seem happy with it) ASN1/BER encodings are just an implementors agreement. There is a group of us looking at how to do Z39.50 over XML/SOAP etc. and realise some of those high level tools people expect - so watch this space!!!

Matthew Dovey
Oxford University Libraries Automation Service
(http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/jafer)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gimon, Charles A 
> Sent: Friday, February 09, 2001 9:07 AM
> To: 'web4lib at webjunction.org'
> Subject: FW: [WEB4LIB] Z39.50
> 
> 
> From a librarian's end-user perspective, Z39.50 is just as 
> well-known as it always has been.
> 
> From a programmer's perspective, Z39.50 is an obscure, 
> outmoded, cranky old protocol that should have died off years 
> ago. Practically no-one outside of the library world and a 
> couple of other isolated fields has heard of it. 
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