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Subject: Re: [search-ws] SWS description document


Janifer wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
>  
> As promised, here is a document that attempts to scope the SWS 
> description language and SWS description documnet.

I thought Janifer's document went into too fine a detail on
some points, so here's my version of Janifer's document....

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Search Web Services:  Description Language

[In the following, by "client" I mean a piece of software that reads
in a "Description" and interacts with the web based service that is
being described by the "Description".]

The purpose of the description language is to act as a standard way to 
produce a document that allows sufficient information for a third party
client to access, query and process results from a web based database or
query service.

The description language describes a server’s capability in respect of:

o) How to submit a search.

If the service is form based, then the Description will tell your client
how to populate the form fields. If the service uses a query language,
such as CQL, then a Description will enable your client to construct
an appropriate query.

o) How to parse the results of the search.

A Description will enable your client to extract from the
server's response the information it needs to perform the task
in hand. Ie, it will be able to extract from the response the result
records, number of records found, diagnostics, sort order, etc, etc.
In fact any item of information contained in the response should be
extractable by the client for use in either further service requests
or any other task the client has to perform.

o) How to further interact with the server.

If extra operations are needed to, say, sort a result set or retrieve
further records from a result set, then a Description will enable your
client to construct the correct url to perform that operation and then
analyse the result from the server.

o) How to handle cookies.

A Description will tell a client which cookies it needs to
store and return to the server and what their default value need be.

The description document may be made by the provider of a database or 
query service or it may be made by a third party. The ability of third 
parties to make description documents means that any database available 
on the web has the potential to be accessed via this standard without 
requiring any changes to the way in which the database enquiry behaves.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry this has taken me so long, but I've been rather busy of late.
I'll also be away for the next fortnight.

Regards,

Ashley.
-- 
Ashley Sanders               a.sanders@manchester.ac.uk
Copac http://copac.ac.uk A Mimas service funded by JISC


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