On 5/8/07, Adam Brin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Godmar,
>         Just FYI, David's script doesn't work with all III catalogs.
> Z39.50 might be a slightly better option (our's, for example, seems to
> produce errors from his test page). I'd be willing to work with you on it,
> if you're up for trying to figure out why it doesn't work in our case.
>

Let's take the specific issues with your catalog off-list, but let me
make one general point on list: I don't mean to prescribe or even
propose a particular implementation (screenscraping, Z39.50,
proprietary XML interface, etc.) - there could be multiple
implementations, chosen by whoever wishes to export their legacy
services. All that should be agreed upon is a set of query syntaxes
and a set of response formats. Ideally, the cardinality of both sets
should be small.

As such, a Z39.50 to XML gateway is certainly an option if the
produced XML is within the set of useful response formats. I tried
using PHP/yaz for this purpose a couple of years ago - this worked
so-so - it wasn't particularly fast. It is potentially harder to
deploy since not everybody will be able to install libyaz.so on their
servers, but for those that could it's certainly an option. I should
point out, however, that the XML produced was not the nice MARC-XML
that David's script produces, so it would require another conversion
step.

 - Godmar