# $Id: ZOOM.pod,v 1.2 2005-11-15 17:23:45 mike Exp $

use strict;
use warnings;

=head1 NAME

ZOOM - Perl extension implementing the ZOOM API for Information Retrieval

=head1 SYNOPSIS

 use ZOOM;
 eval {
     $conn = new ZOOM::Connection($host, $port)
     $conn->option(preferredRecordSyntax => "usmarc");
     $rs = $conn->search_pqf('@attr 1=4 dinosaur');
     $n = $rs->size();
     print $rs->record(0)->render();
 };
 if ($@) {
     print "Error ", $@->code(), ": ", $@->message(), "\n";
 }

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This module provides a nice, Perlish implementation of the ZOOM
Abstract API described at http://zoom.z3950.org/api/

the ZOOM module is implemented as a set of thin classes on top of the
non-OO functions provided by this distribution's C<Net::Z3950::ZOOM>
module, which in 
turn is a thin layer on top of the ZOOM-C code supplied as part of
Index Data's YAZ Toolkit.  Because ZOOM-C is also the underlying code
that implements ZOOM bindings in C++, Visual Basic, Scheme, Ruby, .NET
(including C#) and other languages, this Perl module works compatibly
with those other implementations.  (Of course, the point of a public
API such as ZOOM is that all implementations should be compatible
anyway; but knowing that the same code is running is reassuring.)

The ZOOM module provides two enumerations (C<ZOOM::Error> and
C<ZOOM::Event>), a single utility function C<diag_str()> in the C<ZOOM>
package itself, and eight classes:
C<ZOOM::Exception>,
C<ZOOM::Options>,
C<ZOOM::Connection>,
C<ZOOM::Query>,
C<ZOOM::ResultSet>,
C<ZOOM::Record>,
C<ZOOM::ScanSet>
and
C<ZOOM::Package>.
Of these, the Query class is abstract, and has two concrete
subclasses:
C<ZOOM::Query::CQL>
and
C<ZOOM::Query::PQF>.
Many useful ZOOM applications can be built using only the Connection,
ResultSet and Record classes, as in the example code-snippet above.


=head1 SEE ALSO

The C<Net::Z3950::ZOOM> module, included in the same distribution as this one.

The C<Net::Z3950> module, which this one supersedes.

=head1 AUTHOR

Mike Taylor, E<lt>mike@indexdata.comE<gt>

=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2005 by Index Data.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.4 or,
at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.

=cut

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