+ The problem with the previous example is that you need to know the
+ structure of the documents in order to find them. For example,
+ when we wanted to find the record for the taxon
+ <foreignphrase role="taxon">Sauroposeidon</foreignphrase>,
+ we had to formulate a complex XPath
+ <literal>/Zthes/termName</literal>
+ which embodies the knowledge that taxon names are specified in a
+ <literal><termName></literal> element inside the top-level
+ <literal><Zthes></literal> element.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ This is bad not just because it requires a lot of typing, but more
+ significantly because it ties searching semantics to the physical
+ structure of the searched records. You can't use the same search
+ specification to search two databases if their internal
+ representations are different. Consider an different taxonomy
+ database in which the records have taxon names specified
+ inside a <literal><name></literal> element nested within a
+ <literal><identification></literal> element
+ inside a top-level <literal><taxon></literal> element: then
+ you'd need to search for them using
+ <literal>1=/taxon/identification/name</literal>
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ How, then, can we build broadcasting Information Retrieval
+ applications that look for records in many different databases?
+ The Z39.50 protocol offers a powerful and general solution to this:
+ abstract ``access points''. In the Z39.50 model, an access point
+ is simply a point at which searches can be directed. Nothing is
+ said about implementation: in a given database, an access point
+ might be implemented as an index, a path into physical records, an
+ algorithm for interrogating relational tables or whatever works.
+ The only important thing point is that the semantics of an access
+ point are fixed and well defined.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For convenience, access points are gathered into <firstterm>attribute
+ sets</firstterm>. For example, the BIB-1 attribute set is supposed to
+ contain bibliographic access points such as author, title, subject
+ and ISBN; the GEO attribute set contains access points pertaining
+ to geospatial information (bounding coordinates, stratum, latitude
+ resolution, etc.); the CIMI
+ attribute set contains access points to do with museum collections
+ (provenance, inscriptions, etc.)
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ In practice, the BIB-1 attribute set has tended to be a dumping
+ ground for all sorts of access points, so that, for example, it
+ includes some geospatial access points as well as strictly
+ bibliographic ones. Nevertheless, this model
+ allows a layer of abstraction over the physical representation of
+ records in databases.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ In the BIB-1 attribute set, a taxon name is probably best
+ interpreted as a title - that is, a phrase that identifies the item
+ in question. BIB-1 represents title searches by
+ access point 4. (See
+ <ulink url="ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/z3950/defs/bib1.txt"
+ >The BIB-1 Attribute Set Semantics</ulink>)
+ So we need to configure our dinosaur database so that searches for
+ BIB-1 access point 4 look in the
+ <literal><termName></literal> element,
+ inside the top-level
+ <literal><Zthes></literal> element.