Alex,

Could you expand on how you think the problem that OpenURL tackles would
have been better approached with existing mechanisms? I'm not debating this
necessarily, but from my perspective when OpenURL was first introduced it
solved a real problem that I hadn't seen solved before.

Owen

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:55 PM, Alexander Johannesen <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 22:47, Walker, David <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > I would suggest it's more because, once you step outside of the
> > primary use case for OpenURL, you end-up bumping into *other* standards.
>
> These issues were raised all the back when it was created, as well. I
> guess it's easy to be clever in hindsight. :) Here's what I wrote
> about it 5 years ago (http://shelter.nu/blog-159.html) ;
>
> So let's talk about 'Not invented here' first, because surely, we're
> all guilty of this one from time to time. For example, lately I dug
> into the ANSI/NISO Z39.88 -2004 standard, better known as OpenURL. I
> was looking at it critically, I have to admit, comparing it to what I
> already knew about Web Services, SOA, http,
> Google/Amazon/Flickr/Del.icio.us API's, and various Topic Maps and
> semantic web technologies (I was the technical editor of Explorers
> Guide to the Semantic Web)
>
> I think I can sum up my experiences with OpenURL as such; why? Why
> have the library world invented a new way of doing things that already
> can be done quite well already? Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong
> with the standard per se (except a pretty darn awful choice of
> name!!), so I'm not here criticising the technical merits and the work
> put into it. No, it's a simple 'why' that I have yet to get a decent
> answer to, even after talking to the OpenURL bigwigs about it. I mean,
> come on; convince me! I'm not unreasonable, no truly, really, I just
> want to be convinced that we need this over anything else.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Alex
> --
>  Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
> --- http://shelter.nu/blog/ ----------------------------------------------
> ------------------ http://www.google.com/profiles/alexander.johannesen ---
>



-- 
Owen Stephens
Owen Stephens Consulting
Web: http://www.ostephens.com
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