RE: [search-ws] Scan as a query type

["Matthew J. Dovey" <m.dovey@jisc.ac.uk>]

> scan.index=dc.creator AND scan.term >= <term>

Or

scan.index=dc.creator AND dc.creator >= <term>

might also work?

> What do you think of this approach?

I see two not catastrophic but inelegant issues with this approach:

i) introducing scan.index into a query suddenly introduces the ability
to create meaningless queries. In CQL at present it is possible to
create silly or complicatedly obtuse queries, and it is always possible
for a server to reject a query due to it being too resource intensive or
other implementation issues - but any syntactically valid query will
have an readily understood meaning. It is clear what the intent of the
query is, even if the server is unable to return a result set.
Scan.index introduces meaningless queries. The following simply do not
make sense:

scan.index = dc.creator AND dc.author = "Smith"

scan.index = dc.creator OR scan.term >= "Smith"

NOT scan.index = dc.creator

ii) in both Z39.50 and SRU, the query and the record format/syntax
returned are independent. If a server returns MODS, you can ask for MODS
irrespective of what the query is. In this case, there is a dependency.
If the query includes a term from the scan set, the record syntax
returned will be a scan/index related record set.

Matthew