-<chapter id="introduction">
- <!-- $Id: introduction.xml,v 1.37 2006-06-30 14:36:12 marc Exp $ -->
+ <chapter id="introduction">
<title>Introduction</title>
-
- <sect1>
- <title>Overview</title>
-
- <para>
- <ulink url="http://indexdata.dk/zebra/">Zebra</ulink>
- is a high-performance, general-purpose structured text
- indexing and retrieval engine. It reads records in a
- variety of input formats (eg. email, XML, MARC) and provides access
- to them through a powerful combination of boolean search
- expressions and relevance-ranked free-text queries.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Zebra supports large databases (tens of millions of records,
- tens of gigabytes of data). It allows safe, incremental
- database updates on live systems. Because Zebra supports
- the industry-standard information retrieval protocol, Z39.50,
- you can search Zebra databases using an enormous variety of
- programs and toolkits, both commercial and free, which understand
- this protocol. Application libraries are available to allow
- bespoke clients to be written in Perl, C, C++, Java, Tcl, Visual
- Basic, Python, PHP and more - see
- <ulink url="http://zoom.z3950.org/">the ZOOM web site</ulink>
- for more information on some of these client toolkits.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- This document is an introduction to the Zebra system. It explains
- how to compile the software, how to prepare your first database,
- and how to configure the server to give you the
- functionality that you need.
- </para>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="features">
- <title>Features</title>
-
- <para>
- This is an overview of some of Zebra's most important features:
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Very large databases: logical files can be
- automatically partitioned over multiple disks.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Arbitrarily complex records. The internal data format
- is a structured format conceptually similar to XML or GRS-1,
- which allows lists, nested structured data elements and
- variant forms of data.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Robust updating - records can be added and deleted ``on the fly''
- without rebuilding the index from scratch.
- Records can be safely updated even while users are accessing
- the server.
- The update procedure is tolerant to crashes or hard interrupts
- during database updating - data can be reconstructed following
- a crash.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Configurable to understand many input formats.
- A system of input filters driven by
- regular expressions allows most ASCII-based
- data formats to be easily processed.
- SGML, XML, ISO2709 (MARC), and raw text are also
- supported.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Searching supports a powerful combination of boolean queries as
- well as relevance-ranking (free-text) queries. Truncation,
- masking, full regular expression matching and "approximate
- matching" (eg. spelling mistakes) are all handled.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Index-only databases: data can be, and usually is, imported
- into Zebra's own storage, but Zebra can also refer to
- external files, building and maintaining indexes of "live"
- collections.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Zebra is written in portable C, so it runs on most Unix-like systems
- as well as Windows NT. A binary distribution for Windows NT is
- available at
- <ulink url="http://ftp.indexdata.dk/pub/zebra/win32/"/>,
- and pre-built packages are available for
- <!--- some Linux
- distributions:
- Red Hat 7.x RPMs at
- <ulink url="http://ftp.indexdata.dk/pub/zebra/RedHat7.X/"/>
- and Debian packages at
- -->
- <literal>GNU/Debian Linux</literal> at
- <ulink url="http://ftp.indexdata.dk/pub/zebra/debian/"/>.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <ulink url="&url.z39.50;">Z39.50</ulink> protocol support:
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Protocol facilities: Init, Search, Present (retrieval),
- Segmentation (support for very large records), Delete, Scan
- (index browsing), Sort, Close and support for the ``update''
- Extended Service to add or replace an existing XML record.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Piggy-backed presents are honored in the search request - that
- is, a subset of the found records can be returned directly with
- a search response, enabling search and retrieval to happen in a
- single round-trip.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Named result sets are supported.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Easily configured to support different application profiles, with
- tables for attribute sets, tag sets, and abstract syntaxes.
- Additional tables control facilities such as element mappings to
- different schema (eg., GILS-to-USMARC).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Complex composition specifications using Espec-1 (partial support).
- Element sets are defined using the Espec-1 capability,
- and are specified in configuration files as simple element
- requests (and, optionally, variant requests).
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Multiple record syntaxes
- for data retrieval: GRS-1, SUTRS,
- XML, ISO2709 (MARC), etc. Records can be mapped between record syntaxes
- and schemas on the fly.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para>
-
-
- <para>
- <ulink url="&url.sru;">SRU</ulink> Web Service support:
- </para>
- <para>
- <itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- The protocol operations <literal>explain</literal>,
- <literal>searchRetrieve</literal> and <literal>scan</literal>
- are supported.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- <ulink url="&url.cql;">CQL</ulink> to internal query model RPN
- conversion is supported.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Multiple XML record formats
- for data retrieval are supported, modelled over the GRS-1, SUTRS,
- MARC record formats. Records can be mapped between record
- schemas on the fly. Arbitrarily complex XSLT transformations
- can be applied during record retrieval if one uses the
- <literal>alvis</literal> filter module.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Additional PQF query syntax for
- <literal>searchRetrieve</literal>
- and <literal>scan</literal> operations is supported.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para>
-
-
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="introduction-apps">
- <title>References and Zebra based Applications</title>
- <para>
- Zebra has been deployed in numerous applications, in both the
- academic and commercial worlds, in application domains as diverse
- as bibliographic catalogues, geospatial information, structured
- vocabulary browsing, government information locators, civic
- information systems, environmental observations, museum information
- and web indexes.
- </para>
- <para>
- Notable applications include the following:
- </para>
-
-
- <sect2>
- <title>Koha free open-source ILS</title>
+
+ <section id="overview">
+ <title>Overview</title>
+ <para>
+ &zebra; is a free, fast, friendly information management system. It can
+ index records in &acro.xml;/&acro.sgml;, &acro.marc;, e-mail archives and many other
+ formats, and quickly find them using a combination of boolean
+ searching and relevance ranking. Search-and-retrieve applications can
+ be written using &acro.api;s in a wide variety of languages, communicating
+ with the &zebra; server using industry-standard information-retrieval
+ protocols or web services.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ &zebra; is licensed Open Source, and can be
+ deployed by anyone for any purpose without license fees. The C source
+ code is open to anybody to read and change under the GPL license.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ &zebra; is a networked component which acts as a
+ reliable &acro.z3950; server
+ for both record/document search, presentation, insert, update and
+ delete operations. In addition, it understands the &acro.sru; family of
+ webservices, which exist in &acro.rest; &acro.get;/&acro.post; and truly
+ &acro.soap; flavors.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ &zebra; is available as MS Windows 2003 Server (32 bit) self-extracting
+ package as well as GNU/Debian Linux (32 bit and 64 bit) precompiled
+ packages. It has been deployed successfully on other Unix systems,
+ including Sun Sparc, HP Unix, and many variants of Linux and BSD
+ based systems.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ <ulink url="http://www.indexdata.com/zebra/">http://www.indexdata.com/zebra/</ulink>
+ <ulink url="http://ftp.indexdata.dk/pub/zebra/win32/">http://ftp.indexdata.dk/pub/zebra/win32/</ulink>
+ <ulink url="http://ftp.indexdata.dk/pub/zebra/debian/">http://ftp.indexdata.dk/pub/zebra/debian/</ulink>
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ <ulink url="http://indexdata.dk/zebra/">&zebra;</ulink>
+ is a high-performance, general-purpose structured text
+ indexing and retrieval engine. It reads records in a
+ variety of input formats (e.g. email, &acro.xml;, &acro.marc;) and provides access
+ to them through a powerful combination of boolean search
+ expressions and relevance-ranked free-text queries.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ &zebra; supports large databases (tens of millions of records,
+ tens of gigabytes of data). It allows safe, incremental
+ database updates on live systems. Because &zebra; supports
+ the industry-standard information retrieval protocol, &acro.z3950;,
+ you can search &zebra; databases using an enormous variety of
+ programs and toolkits, both commercial and free, which understand
+ this protocol. Application libraries are available to allow
+ bespoke clients to be written in Perl, C, C++, Java, Tcl, Visual
+ Basic, Python, &acro.php; and more - see the
+ <ulink url="&url.zoom;">&acro.zoom; web site</ulink>
+ for more information on some of these client toolkits.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This document is an introduction to the &zebra; system. It explains
+ how to compile the software, how to prepare your first database,
+ and how to configure the server to give you the
+ functionality that you need.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="features">
+ <title>&zebra; Features Overview</title>
+
+ <section id="features-document">
+ <title>&zebra; Document Model</title>
+
+ <table id="table-features-document" frame="top">
+ <title>&zebra; document model</title>
+ <tgroup cols="4">
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="feature"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="availability"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="3*" colname="notes"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="2*" colname="references"/>
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Feature</entry>
+ <entry>Availability</entry>
+ <entry>Notes</entry>
+ <entry>Reference</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Complex semi-structured Documents</entry>
+ <entry>&acro.xml; and &acro.grs1; Documents</entry>
+ <entry>Both &acro.xml; and &acro.grs1; documents exhibit a &acro.dom; like internal
+ representation allowing for complex indexing and display rules</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="record-model-alvisxslt"/> and
+ <xref linkend="grs"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Input document formats</entry>
+ <entry>&acro.xml;, &acro.sgml;, Text, ISO2709 (&acro.marc;)</entry>
+ <entry>
+ A system of input filters driven by
+ regular expressions allows most ASCII-based
+ data formats to be easily processed.
+ &acro.sgml;, &acro.xml;, ISO2709 (&acro.marc;), and raw text are also
+ supported.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="componentmodules"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Document storage</entry>
+ <entry>Index-only, Key storage, Document storage</entry>
+ <entry>Data can be, and usually is, imported
+ into &zebra;'s own storage, but &zebra; can also refer to
+ external files, building and maintaining indexes of "live"
+ collections.</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="features-search">
+ <title>&zebra; Search Features</title>
+
+ <table id="table-features-search" frame="top">
+ <title>&zebra; search functionality</title>
+ <tgroup cols="4">
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="feature"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="availability"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="3*" colname="notes"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="2*" colname="references"/>
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Feature</entry>
+ <entry>Availability</entry>
+ <entry>Notes</entry>
+ <entry>Reference</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Query languages</entry>
+ <entry>&acro.cql; and &acro.rpn;/&acro.pqf;</entry>
+ <entry>The type-1 Reverse Polish Notation (&acro.rpn;)
+ and its textual representation Prefix Query Format (&acro.pqf;) are
+ supported. The Common Query Language (&acro.cql;) can be configured as
+ a mapping from &acro.cql; to &acro.rpn;/&acro.pqf;</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-query-languages-pqf"/> and
+ <xref linkend="querymodel-cql-to-pqf"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Complex boolean query tree</entry>
+ <entry>&acro.cql; and &acro.rpn;/&acro.pqf;</entry>
+ <entry>Both &acro.cql; and &acro.rpn;/&acro.pqf; allow atomic query parts (&acro.apt;) to
+ be combined into complex boolean query trees</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-rpn-tree"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Field search</entry>
+ <entry>user defined</entry>
+ <entry>Atomic query parts (&acro.apt;) are either general, or
+ directed at user-specified document fields
+ </entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-atomic-queries"/>,
+ <xref linkend="querymodel-use-string"/>,
+ <xref linkend="querymodel-bib1-use"/>, and
+ <xref linkend="querymodel-idxpath-use"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Data normalization</entry>
+ <entry>user defined</entry>
+ <entry>Data normalization, text tokenization and character
+ mappings can be applied during indexing and searching</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="fields-and-charsets"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Predefined field types</entry>
+ <entry>user defined</entry>
+ <entry>Data fields can be indexed as phrase, as into word
+ tokenized text, as numeric values, URLs, dates, and raw binary
+ data.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="character-map-files"/> and
+ <xref linkend="querymodel-pqf-apt-mapping-structuretype"/>
+ </entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Regular expression matching</entry>
+ <entry>available</entry>
+ <entry>Full regular expression matching and "approximate
+ matching" (e.g. spelling mistake corrections) are handled.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-regular"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Term truncation</entry>
+ <entry>left, right, left-and-right</entry>
+ <entry>The truncation attribute specifies whether variations of
+ one or more characters are allowed between search term and hit
+ terms, or not. Using non-default truncation attributes will
+ broaden the document hit set of a search query.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-bib1-truncation"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Fuzzy searches</entry>
+ <entry>Spelling correction</entry>
+ <entry>In addition, fuzzy searches are implemented, where one
+ spelling mistake in search terms is matched</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-bib1-truncation"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="features-scan">
+ <title>&zebra; Index Scanning</title>
+
+ <table id="table-features-scan" frame="top">
+ <title>&zebra; index scanning</title>
+ <tgroup cols="4">
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="feature"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="availability"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="3*" colname="notes"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="2*" colname="references"/>
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Feature</entry>
+ <entry>Availability</entry>
+ <entry>Notes</entry>
+ <entry>Reference</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Scan</entry>
+ <entry>term suggestions</entry>
+ <entry><literal>Scan</literal> on a given named index returns all the
+ indexed terms in lexicographical order near the given start
+ term. This can be used to create drop-down menus and search
+ suggestions.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-operation-type-scan"/> and
+ <xref linkend="querymodel-atomic-queries"/>
+ </entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Facetted browsing</entry>
+ <entry>available</entry>
+ <entry>Zebra 2.1 and allows retrieval of facets for
+ a result set.
+ </entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-zebra-attr-scan"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Drill-down or refine-search</entry>
+ <entry>partially</entry>
+ <entry>scanning in result sets can be used to implement
+ drill-down in search clients</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-zebra-attr-scan"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="features-presentation">
+ <title>&zebra; Document Presentation</title>
+
+ <table id="table-features-presentation" frame="top">
+ <title>&zebra; document presentation</title>
+ <tgroup cols="4">
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="feature"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="availability"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="3*" colname="notes"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="2*" colname="references"/>
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Feature</entry>
+ <entry>Availability</entry>
+ <entry>Notes</entry>
+ <entry>Reference</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Hit count</entry>
+ <entry>yes</entry>
+ <entry>Search results include at any time the total hit count of a given
+ query, either exact computed, or approximative, in case that the
+ hit count exceeds a possible pre-defined hit set truncation
+ level.</entry>
+ <entry>
+ <xref linkend="querymodel-zebra-local-attr-limit"/> and
+ <xref linkend="zebra-cfg"/>
+ </entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Paged result sets</entry>
+ <entry>yes</entry>
+ <entry>Paging of search requests and present/display request
+ can return any successive number of records from any start
+ position in the hit set, i.e. it is trivial to provide search
+ results in successive pages of any size.</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>&acro.xml; document transformations</entry>
+ <entry>&acro.xslt; based</entry>
+ <entry> Record presentation can be performed in many
+ pre-defined &acro.xml; data
+ formats, where the original &acro.xml; records are on-the-fly transformed
+ through any preconfigured &acro.xslt; transformation. It is therefore
+ trivial to present records in short/full &acro.xml; views, transforming to
+ RSS, Dublin Core, or other &acro.xml; based data formats, or transform
+ records to XHTML snippets ready for inserting in XHTML pages.</entry>
+ <entry>
+ <xref linkend="record-model-alvisxslt-elementset"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Binary record transformations</entry>
+ <entry>&acro.marc;, &acro.usmarc;, &acro.marc21; and &acro.marcxml;</entry>
+ <entry>post-filter record transformations</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Record Syntaxes</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ <entry> Multiple record syntaxes
+ for data retrieval: &acro.grs1;, &acro.sutrs;,
+ &acro.xml;, ISO2709 (&acro.marc;), etc. Records can be mapped between
+ record syntaxes and schemas on the fly.</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>&zebra; internal metadata</entry>
+ <entry>yes</entry>
+ <entry> &zebra; internal document metadata can be fetched in
+ &acro.sutrs; and &acro.xml; record syntaxes. Those are useful in client
+ applications.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="special-retrieval"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>&zebra; internal raw record data</entry>
+ <entry>yes</entry>
+ <entry> &zebra; internal raw, binary record data can be fetched in
+ &acro.sutrs; and &acro.xml; record syntaxes, leveraging %zebra; to a
+ binary storage system</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="special-retrieval"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>&zebra; internal record field data</entry>
+ <entry>yes</entry>
+ <entry> &zebra; internal record field data can be fetched in
+ &acro.sutrs; and &acro.xml; record syntaxes. This makes very fast minimal
+ record data displays possible.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="special-retrieval"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="features-sort-rank">
+ <title>&zebra; Sorting and Ranking</title>
+
+ <table id="table-features-sort-rank" frame="top">
+ <title>&zebra; sorting and ranking</title>
+ <tgroup cols="4">
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="feature"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="availability"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="3*" colname="notes"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="2*" colname="references"/>
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Feature</entry>
+ <entry>Availability</entry>
+ <entry>Notes</entry>
+ <entry>Reference</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Sort</entry>
+ <entry>numeric, lexicographic</entry>
+ <entry>Sorting on the basis of alpha-numeric and numeric data
+ is supported. Alphanumeric sorts can be configured for
+ different data encodings and locales for European languages.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="administration-ranking-sorting"/> and
+ <xref linkend="querymodel-zebra-attr-sorting"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Combined sorting</entry>
+ <entry>yes</entry>
+ <entry>Sorting on the basis of combined sorts e.g. combinations of
+ ascending/descending sorts of lexicographical/numeric/date field data
+ is supported</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="administration-ranking-sorting"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Relevance ranking</entry>
+ <entry>TF-IDF like</entry>
+ <entry>Relevance-ranking of free-text queries is supported
+ using a TF-IDF like algorithm.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="administration-ranking-dynamic"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Static pre-ranking</entry>
+ <entry>yes</entry>
+ <entry>Enables pre-index time ranking of documents where hit
+ lists are ordered first by ascending static rank, then by
+ ascending document ID.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="administration-ranking-static"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+
+
+ <section id="features-updates">
+ <title>&zebra; Live Updates</title>
+
+
+ <table id="table-features-updates" frame="top">
+ <title>&zebra; live updates</title>
+ <tgroup cols="4">
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="feature"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="availability"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="3*" colname="notes"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="2*" colname="references"/>
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Feature</entry>
+ <entry>Availability</entry>
+ <entry>Notes</entry>
+ <entry>Reference</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Incremental and batch updates</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ <entry>It is possible to schedule record inserts/updates/deletes in any
+ quantity, from single individual handled records to batch updates
+ in strikes of any size, as well as total re-indexing of all records
+ from file system. </entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="zebraidx"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Remote updates</entry>
+ <entry>&acro.z3950; extended services</entry>
+ <entry>Updates can be performed from remote locations using the
+ &acro.z3950; extended services. Access to extended services can be
+ login-password protected.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="administration-extended-services"/> and
+ <xref linkend="zebra-cfg"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Live updates</entry>
+ <entry>transaction based</entry>
+ <entry> Data updates are transaction based and can be performed
+ on running &zebra; systems. Full searchability is preserved
+ during life data update due to use of shadow disk areas for
+ update operations. Multiple update transactions at the same
+ time are lined up, to be performed one after each other. Data
+ integrity is preserved.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="shadow-registers"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="features-protocol">
+ <title>&zebra; Networked Protocols</title>
+
+ <table id="table-features-protocol" frame="top">
+ <title>&zebra; networked protocols</title>
+ <tgroup cols="4">
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="feature"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="availability"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="3*" colname="notes"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="2*" colname="references"/>
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Feature</entry>
+ <entry>Availability</entry>
+ <entry>Notes</entry>
+ <entry>Reference</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Fundamental operations</entry>
+ <entry>&acro.z3950;/&acro.sru; <literal>explain</literal>,
+ <literal>search</literal>, <literal>scan</literal>, and
+ <literal>update</literal></entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="querymodel-operation-types"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>&acro.z3950; protocol support</entry>
+ <entry>yes</entry>
+ <entry> Protocol facilities supported are:
+ <literal>init</literal>, <literal>search</literal>,
+ <literal>present</literal> (retrieval),
+ Segmentation (support for very large records),
+ <literal>delete</literal>, <literal>scan</literal>
+ (index browsing), <literal>sort</literal>,
+ <literal>close</literal> and support for the <literal>update</literal>
+ Extended Service to add or replace an existing &acro.xml;
+ record. Piggy-backed presents are honored in the search
+ request. Named result sets are supported.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="protocol-support"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Web Service support</entry>
+ <entry>&acro.sru;</entry>
+ <entry> The protocol operations <literal>explain</literal>,
+ <literal>searchRetrieve</literal> and <literal>scan</literal>
+ are supported. <ulink url="&url.cql;">&acro.cql;</ulink> to internal
+ query model &acro.rpn;
+ conversion is supported. Extended RPN queries
+ for search/retrieve and scan are supported.</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="zebrasrv-sru-support"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="features-scalability">
+ <title>&zebra; Data Size and Scalability</title>
+
+ <table id="table-features-scalability" frame="top">
+ <title>&zebra; data size and scalability</title>
+ <tgroup cols="4">
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="feature"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="availability"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="3*" colname="notes"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="2*" colname="references"/>
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Feature</entry>
+ <entry>Availability</entry>
+ <entry>Notes</entry>
+ <entry>Reference</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>No of records</entry>
+ <entry>40-60 million</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Data size</entry>
+ <entry>100 GB of record data</entry>
+ <entry>&zebra; based applications have successfully indexed up
+ to 100 GB of record data</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Scale out</entry>
+ <entry>multiple discs</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Performance</entry>
+ <entry><literal>O(n * log N)</literal></entry>
+ <entry> &zebra; query speed and performance is affected roughly by
+ <literal>O(log N)</literal>,
+ where <literal>N</literal> is the total database size, and by
+ <literal>O(n)</literal>, where <literal>n</literal> is the
+ specific query hit set size.</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Average search times</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ <entry> Even on very large size databases hit rates of 20 queries per
+ seconds with average query answering time of 1 second are possible,
+ provided that the boolean queries are constructed sufficiently
+ precise to result in hit sets of the order of 1000 to 5.000
+ documents.</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Large databases</entry>
+ <entry>64 bit file pointers</entry>
+ <entry>64 file pointers assure that register files can extend
+ the 2 GB limit. Logical files can be
+ automatically partitioned over multiple disks, thus allowing for
+ large databases.</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ </row>
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="features-platforms">
+ <title>&zebra; Supported Platforms</title>
+
+ <table id="table-features-platforms" frame="top">
+ <title>&zebra; supported platforms</title>
+ <tgroup cols="4">
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="feature"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="1*" colname="availability"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="3*" colname="notes"/>
+ <colspec colwidth="2*" colname="references"/>
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Feature</entry>
+ <entry>Availability</entry>
+ <entry>Notes</entry>
+ <entry>Reference</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Linux</entry>
+ <entry></entry>
+ <entry>GNU Linux (32 and 64bit), journaling Reiser or (better)
+ JFS file system
+ on disks. NFS file systems are not supported.
+ GNU/Debian Linux packages are available</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="installation-debian"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Unix</entry>
+ <entry>tar-ball</entry>
+ <entry>&zebra; is written in portable C, so it runs on most
+ Unix-like systems.
+ Usual tar-ball install possible on many major Unix systems</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="installation-unix"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Windows</entry>
+ <entry>NT/2000/2003/XP</entry>
+ <entry>&zebra; runs as well on Windows (NT/2000/2003/XP).
+ Windows installer packages available</entry>
+ <entry><xref linkend="installation-win32"/></entry>
+ </row>
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+ </section>
+
+
+ </section>
+
+ <section id="introduction-apps">
+ <title>References and &zebra; based Applications</title>
+ <para>
+ &zebra; has been deployed in numerous applications, in both the
+ academic and commercial worlds, in application domains as diverse
+ as bibliographic catalogues, Geo-spatial information, structured
+ vocabulary browsing, government information locators, civic
+ information systems, environmental observations, museum information
+ and web indexes.
+ </para>
<para>
+ Notable applications include the following:
+ </para>
+
+
+ <section id="koha-ils">
+ <title>Koha free open-source ILS</title>
+ <para>
<ulink url="http://www.koha.org/">Koha</ulink> is a full-featured
- open-source ILS, initially developed in
+ open-source ILS, initially developed in
New Zealand by Katipo Communications Ltd, and first deployed in
January of 2000 for Horowhenua Library Trust. It is currently
maintained by a team of software providers and library technology
- staff from around the globe.
+ staff from around the globe.
</para>
<para>
- <ulink url="http://liblime.com/">LibLime</ulink>,
+ <ulink url="http://liblime.com/">LibLime</ulink>,
a company that is marketing and supporting Koha, adds in
- the new release of Koha 3.0 the Zebra
+ the new release of Koha 3.0 the &zebra;
database server to drive its bibliographic database.
</para>
<para>
In early 2005, the Koha project development team began looking at
- ways to improve MARC support and overcome scalability limitations
+ ways to improve &acro.marc; support and overcome scalability limitations
in the Koha 2.x series. After extensive evaluations of the best
of the Open Source textual database engines - including MySQL
full-text searching, PostgreSQL, Lucene and Plucene - the team
- selected Zebra.
+ selected &zebra;.
</para>
<para>
- "Zebra completely eliminates scalability limitations, because it
+ "&zebra; completely eliminates scalability limitations, because it
can support tens of millions of records." explained Joshua
Ferraro, LibLime's Technology President and Koha's Project
Release Manager. "Our performance tests showed search results in
under a second for databases with over 5 million records on a
- modest i386 900Mhz test server."
+ modest i386 900Mhz test server."
</para>
<para>
- "Zebra also includes support for true boolean search expressions
+ "&zebra; also includes support for true boolean search expressions
and relevance-ranked free-text queries, both of which the Koha
- 2.x series lack. Zebra also supports incremental and safe
+ 2.x series lack. &zebra; also supports incremental and safe
database updates, which allow on-the-fly record
- management. Finally, since Zebra has at its heart the Z39.50
+ management. Finally, since &zebra; has at its heart the &acro.z3950;
protocol, it greatly improves Koha's support for that critical
- library standard."
+ library standard."
</para>
- <para>
- Although the bibliographic database will be moved to Zebra, Koha
+ <para>
+ Although the bibliographic database will be moved to &zebra;, Koha
3.0 will continue to use a relational SQL-based database design
for the 'factual' database. "Relational database managers have
their strengths, in spite of their inability to handle large
numbers of bibliographic records efficiently," summed up Ferraro,
"We're taking the best from both worlds in our redesigned Koha
- 3.0.
- </para>
- <para>
+ 3.0.
+ </para>
+ <para>
See also LibLime's newsletter article
- <ulink url="http://www.liblime.com/newsletter/2006/01/features/koha-earns-its-stripes/">
- Koha Earns its Stripes</ulink>.
- </para>
- </sect2>
+ <ulink url="http://www.liblime.com/newsletter/2006/01/features/koha-earns-its-stripes/">
+ Koha Earns its Stripes</ulink>.
+ </para>
+ </section>
- <sect2>
- <title>Emilda open source ILS</title>
- <para>
- <ulink url="http://www.emilda.org/">Emilda</ulink>
- is a complete Integrated Library System, released under the
- GNU General Public License. It has a
- full featured Web-OPAC, allowing comprehensive system management
- from virtually any computer with an Internet connection, has
- template based layout allowing anyone to alter the visual
- appearance of Emilda, and is
- XML based language for fast and easy portability to virtually any
- language.
- Currently, Emilda is used at three schools in Espoo, Finland.
+
+ <section id="kete-dom">
+ <title>Kete Open Source Digital Library and Archiving software</title>
+ <para>
+ <ulink url="http://kete.net.nz/">Kete</ulink> is a digital object
+ management repository, initially developed in
+ New Zealand. Initial development has
+ been a partnership between the Horowhenua Library Trust and
+ Katipo Communications Ltd. funded as part of the Community
+ Partnership Fund in 2006.
+ Kete is purpose built
+ software to enable communities to build their own digital
+ libraries, archives and repositories.
</para>
<para>
- As a surplus, 100% MARC compatibility has been achieved using the
- Zebra Server from Index Data as backend server.
- </para>
- </sect2>
+ It is based on Ruby-on-Rails and MySQL, and integrates the &zebra; server
+ and the &yaz; toolkit for indexing and retrieval of it's content.
+ Zebra is run as separate computer process from the Kete
+ application.
+ See
+ how Kete <ulink
+ url="http://kete.net.nz/documentation/topics/show/139-managing-zebra">manages
+ Zebra.</ulink>
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Why does Kete wants to use Zebra?? Speed, Scalability and easy
+ integration with Koha. Read their
+ <ulink
+ url="http://kete.net.nz/blog/topics/show/44-who-what-why-when-answering-some-of-the-niggly-development-questions">detailed
+ reasoning here.</ulink>
+ </para>
+ </section>
- <sect2>
- <title>ReIndex.Net web based ILS</title>
+ <section id="reindex-ils">
+ <title>ReIndex.Net web based ILS</title>
<para>
<ulink url="http://www.reindex.net/index.php?lang=en">Reindex.net</ulink>
is a netbased library service offering all
traditional functions on a very high level plus many new
services. Reindex.net is a comprehensive and powerful WEB system
- based on standards such as XML and Z39.50.
- updates. Reindex supports MARC21, danMARC eller Dublin Core with
- UTF8-encoding.
+ based on standards such as &acro.xml; and &acro.z3950;.
+ updates. Reindex supports &acro.marc21;, dan&acro.marc; eller Dublin Core with
+ UTF8-encoding.
</para>
<para>
- Reindex.net runs on GNU/Debian Linux with Zebra and Simpleserver
- from Index
- Data for bibliographic data. The reational database system
- Sybase 9 XML is used for
- administrative data.
- Internally MARCXML is used for bibliographical records. Update
- utilizes Z39.50 extended services.
+ Reindex.net runs on GNU/Debian Linux with &zebra; and Simpleserver
+ from Index
+ Data for bibliographic data. The relational database system
+ Sybase 9 &acro.xml; is used for
+ administrative data.
+ Internally &acro.marcxml; is used for bibliographical records. Update
+ utilizes &acro.z3950; extended services.
</para>
- </sect2>
-
-
- <sect2>
- <title>DADS - the DTV Article Database Service</title>
- <para>
- DADS is a huge database of more than ten million records, totalling
- over ten gigabytes of data. The records are metadata about academic
- journal articles, primarily scientific; about 10% of these
- metadata records link to the full text of the articles they
- describe, a body of about a terabyte of information (although the
- full text is not indexed.)
- </para>
- <para>
- It allows students and researchers at DTU (Danmarks Tekniske
- Universitet, the Technical College of Denmark) to find and order
- articles from multiple databases in a single query. The database
- contains literature on all engineering subjects. It's available
- on-line through a web gateway, though currently only to registered
- users.
- </para>
- <para>
- More information can be found at
- <ulink url="http://www.dtv.dk/"/> and
- <ulink url="http://dads.dtv.dk"/>
- </para>
- </sect2>
+ </section>
- <sect2>
- <title>Infonet Eprints</title>
- <para>
- The InfoNet Eprints service from the
- <ulink url="http://www.dtv.dk/">
- Technical Knowledge Center of Denmark</ulink>
- provides access to documents stored in
- eprint/preprint servers and institutional research archives around
- the world. The service is based on Open Archives Initiative metadata
- harvesting of selected scientific archives around the world. These
- open archives offer free and unrestricted access to their contents.
+ <section id="dads-article-database">
+ <title>DADS - the DTV Article Database
+ Service</title>
+ <para>
+ DADS is a huge database of more than ten million records, totalling
+ over ten gigabytes of data. The records are metadata about academic
+ journal articles, primarily scientific; about 10% of these
+ metadata records link to the full text of the articles they
+ describe, a body of about a terabyte of information (although the
+ full text is not indexed.)
</para>
- <para>
- Infonet Eprints currently holds 1.4 million records from 16 archives.
- The online search facility is found at
- <ulink url="http://preprints.cvt.dk"/>.
- </para>
- </sect2>
+ <para>
+ It allows students and researchers at DTU (Danmarks Tekniske
+ Universitet, the Technical College of Denmark) to find and order
+ articles from multiple databases in a single query. The database
+ contains literature on all engineering subjects. It's available
+ on-line through a web gateway, though currently only to registered
+ users.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ More information can be found at
+ <ulink url="http://www.dtic.dtu.dk/"/> and
+ <ulink url="http://dads.dtv.dk"/>
+ </para>
+ </section>
- <sect2>
- <title>Alvis</title>
- <para>
- The <ulink url="http://www.alvis.info/alvis/">Alvis</ulink> EU
- project run under the 6th Framework (IST-1-002068-STP)
- is building a semantic-based peer-to-peer search engine. A
- consortium of eleven partners from six different European
- Community countries plus Switzerland and China contribute
- expertise in a broad range of specialties including network
- topologies, routing algorithms, linguistic analysis and
- bioinformatics.
+ <section id="uls">
+ <title>ULS (Union List of Serials)</title>
+ <para>
+ The M25 Systems Team
+ has created a union catalogue for the periodicals of the
+ twenty-one constituent libraries of the University of London and
+ the University of Westminster
+ (<ulink url="http://www.m25lib.ac.uk/ULS/"/>).
+ They have achieved this using an
+ unusual architecture, which they describe as a
+ ``non-distributed virtual union catalogue''.
</para>
<para>
- The Zebra information retrieval indexing machine is used inside
- the Alvis framework to
- manage huge collections of natural language processed and
- enhanced XML data, coming from a topic relevant web crawl.
- In this application, Zebra swallows and manages 37GB of XML data
- in about 4 hours, resulting in search times of fractions of
- seconds.
- </para>
- </sect2>
-
-
- <sect2>
- <title>ULS (Union List of Serials)</title>
- <para>
- The M25 Systems Team
- has created a union catalogue for the periodicals of the
- twenty-one constituent libraries of the University of London and
- the University of Westminster
- (<ulink url="http://www.m25lib.ac.uk/ULS/"/>).
- They have achieved this using an
- unusual architecture, which they describe as a
- ``non-distributed virtual union catalogue''.
- </para>
- <para>
- The member libraries send in data files representing their
- periodicals, including both brief bibliographic data and summary
- holdings. Then 21 individual Z39.50 targets are created, each
- using Zebra, and all mounted on the single hardware server.
- The live service provides a web gateway allowing Z39.50 searching
- of all of the targets or a selection of them. Zebra's small
- footprint allows a relatively modest system to comfortably host
- the 21 servers.
- </para>
- <para>
- More information can be found at
- <ulink url="http://www.m25lib.ac.uk/ULS/"/>
- </para>
- </sect2>
+ The member libraries send in data files representing their
+ periodicals, including both brief bibliographic data and summary
+ holdings. Then 21 individual &acro.z3950; targets are created, each
+ using &zebra;, and all mounted on the single hardware server.
+ The live service provides a web gateway allowing &acro.z3950; searching
+ of all of the targets or a selection of them. &zebra;'s small
+ footprint allows a relatively modest system to comfortably host
+ the 21 servers.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ More information can be found at
+ <ulink url="http://www.m25lib.ac.uk/ULS/"/>
+ </para>
+ </section>
- <sect2>
- <title>NLI-Z39.50 - a Natural Language Interface for Libraries</title>
- <para>
- Fernuniversität Hagen in Germany have developed a natural
- language interface for access to library databases.
- <!-- <ulink
- url="http://ki212.fernuni-hagen.de/nli/NLIintro.html"/> -->
- In order to evaluate this interface for recall and precision, they
- chose Zebra as the basis for retrieval effectiveness. The Zebra
- server contains a copy of the GIRT database, consisting of more
- than 76000 records in SGML format (bibliographic records from
- social science), which are mapped to MARC for presentation.
- </para>
- <para>
- (GIRT is the German Indexing and Retrieval Testdatabase. It is a
- standard German-language test database for intelligent indexing
- and retrieval systems. See
- <ulink url="http://www.gesis.org/forschung/informationstechnologie/clef-delos.htm"/>)
- </para>
- <para>
- Evaluation will take place as part of the TREC/CLEF campaign 2003
- <ulink url="http://clef.iei.pi.cnr.it"/>.
- <!-- or <ulink url="http://www4.eurospider.ch/CLEF/"/> -->
- </para>
- <para>
- For more information, contact Johannes Leveling
- <email>Johannes.Leveling@FernUni-Hagen.De</email>
- </para>
- </sect2>
+ <section id="various-web-indexes">
+ <title>Various web indexes</title>
+ <para>
+ &zebra; has been used by a variety of institutions to construct
+ indexes of large web sites, typically in the region of tens of
+ millions of pages. In this role, it functions somewhat similarly
+ to the engine of Google or AltaVista, but for a selected intranet
+ or a subset of the whole Web.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For example, Liverpool University's web-search facility (see on
+ the home page at
+ <ulink url="http://www.liv.ac.uk/"/>
+ and many sub-pages) works by relevance-searching a &zebra; database
+ which is populated by the Harvest-NG web-crawling software.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For more information on Liverpool university's intranet search
+ architecture, contact John Gilbertson
+ <email>jgilbert@liverpool.ac.uk</email>
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Kang-Jin Lee
+ has recently modified the Harvest web indexer to use &zebra; as
+ its native repository engine. His comments on the switch over
+ from the old engine are revealing:
+ <blockquote>
+ <para>
+ The first results after some testing with &zebra; are very
+ promising. The tests were done with around 220,000 SOIF files,
+ which occupies 1.6GB of disk space.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Building the index from scratch takes around one hour with &zebra;
+ where [old-engine] needs around five hours. While [old-engine]
+ blocks search requests when updating its index, &zebra; can still
+ answer search requests.
+ [...]
+ &zebra; supports incremental indexing which will speed up indexing
+ even further.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ While the search time of [old-engine] varies from some seconds
+ to some minutes depending how expensive the query is, &zebra;
+ usually takes around one to three seconds, even for expensive
+ queries.
+ [...]
+ &zebra; can search more than 100 times faster than [old-engine]
+ and can process multiple search requests simultaneously
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ I am very happy to see such nice software available under GPL.
+ </para>
+ </blockquote>
+ </para>
+ </section>
+ </section>
- <sect2>
- <title>Various web indexes</title>
- <para>
- Zebra has been used by a variety of institutions to construct
- indexes of large web sites, typically in the region of tens of
- millions of pages. In this role, it functions somewhat similarly
- to the engine of google or altavista, but for a selected intranet
- or a subset of the whole Web.
- </para>
+ <section id="introduction-support">
+ <title>Support</title>
<para>
- For example, Liverpool University's web-search facility (see on
- the home page at
- <ulink url="http://www.liv.ac.uk/"/>
- and many sub-pages) works by relevance-searching a Zebra database
- which is populated by the Harvest-NG web-crawling software.
+ You can get support for &zebra; from at least three sources.
</para>
<para>
- For more information on Liverpool university's intranet search
- architecture, contact John Gilbertson
- <email>jgilbert@liverpool.ac.uk</email>
+ First, there's the &zebra; web site at
+ <ulink url="&url.idzebra;"/>,
+ which always has the most recent version available for download.
+ If you have a problem with &zebra;, the first thing to do is see
+ whether it's fixed in the current release.
</para>
<para>
- Kang-Jin Lee
- has recently modified the Harvest web indexer to use Zebra as
- its native repository engine. His comments on the switch over
- from the old engine are revealing:
- <blockquote>
- <para>
- The first results after some testing with Zebra are very
- promising. The tests were done with around 220,000 SOIF files,
- which occupies 1.6GB of disk space.
- </para>
- <para>
- Building the index from scratch takes around one hour with Zebra
- where [old-engine] needs around five hours. While [old-engine]
- blocks search requests when updating its index, Zebra can still
- answer search requests.
- [...]
- Zebra supports incremental indexing which will speed up indexing
- even further.
- </para>
- <para>
- While the search time of [old-engine] varies from some seconds
- to some minutes depending how expensive the query is, Zebra
- usually takes around one to three seconds, even for expensive
- queries.
- [...]
- Zebra can search more than 100 times faster than [old-engine]
- and can process multiple search requests simultaneously
- </para>
- <para>
- I am very happy to see such nice software available under GPL.
- </para>
- </blockquote>
+ Second, there's the &zebra; mailing list. Its home page at
+ <ulink url="&url.idzebra.mailinglist;"/>
+ includes a complete archive of all messages that have ever been
+ posted on the list. The &zebra; mailing list is used both for
+ announcements from the authors (new
+ releases, bug fixes, etc.) and general discussion. You are welcome
+ to seek support there. Join by filling the form on the list home page.
</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
-
- <sect1 id="introduction-support">
- <title>Support</title>
- <para>
- You can get support for Zebra from at least three sources.
- </para>
- <para>
- First, there's the Zebra web site at
- <ulink url="http://indexdata.dk/zebra/"/>,
- which always has the most recent version available for download.
- If you have a problem with Zebra, the first thing to do is see
- whether it's fixed in the current release.
- </para>
- <para>
- Second, there's the Zebra mailing list. Its home page at
- <ulink url="http://lists.indexdata.dk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/zebralist"/>
- includes a complete archive of all messages that have ever been
- posted on the list. The Zebra mailing list is used both for
- announcements from the authors (new
- releases, bug fixes, etc.) and general discussion. You are welcome
- to seek support there. Join by filling the form on the list home page.
- </para>
- <para>
- Third, it's possible to buy a commercial support contract, with
- well defined service levels and response times, from Index Data.
- See
- <ulink url="http://indexdata.dk/support/"/>
- for details.
- </para>
- </sect1>
-
-
- <sect1 id="future">
- <title>Future Directions</title>
-
- <para>
- These are some of the plans that we have for the software in the near
- and far future, ordered approximately as we expect to work on them.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improved support for XML in search and retrieval. Eventually,
- the goal is for Zebra to pull double duty as a flexible
- information retrieval engine and high-performance XML
- repository. The recent addition of XPath searching is one
- example of the kind of enhancement we're working on.
- </para>
- <para>
- There is also the experimental <literal>ALVIS XSLT</literal>
- XML input filter, which unleashes the full power of DOM based
- XSLT transformations during indexing and record retrieval. Work
- on this filter has been sponsored by the ALVIS EU project
- <ulink url="http://www.alvis.info/alvis/"/>. We expect this filter to
- mature soon, as it is planned to be included in the version 1.4
- release of Zebra.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Access to the search engine through SOAP/RPC API to allow the
- construction of applications without requiring Z39.50 tools.
- <!--
- This will shortly be available by means of Index Data's
- <ulink url="http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/srw/">SRW</ulink>-to-Z39.50 gateway, currently in beta test.
- -->
- Experimental support of the
- Search/Retrieve Via URL ( <ulink url="&url.sru;">SRU</ulink>)
- <ulink url="&url.sru;"/>
- REST webservice, and the
- Search/Retrieve Web Service ( <ulink url="http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/srw/">SRW</ulink>)
- <ulink url="http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/srw/"/>
- SOAP Web Service have recently been added to the YAZ/Zebra
- combo - including server side Common Query Language (<ulink url="&url.cql;">CQL</ulink>)
- <ulink url="&url.cql;"/> parsing
- and configuration. It remains to find a sponsor for further testing,
- documentation and packaging of this exiting component.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Finalisation and documentation of Zebra's C programming
- API, allowing updates, database management and other functions
- not readily expressed in Z39.50. We will also consider
- exposing the API through SOAP.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Support for the use of Perl both for access to the Zebra API
- and for building extension ``plug-ins'' such as input filters.
- The code for this has been contributed to the source tree by
- Peter Popovics
- <email>pop@technomat.hu</email>,
- and is in the process of being integrated and tested.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>
- Improved free-text searching. We're first and foremost octet jockeys and
- we're actively looking for organisations or people who'd like
- to contribute experience in relevance ranking and text
- searching.
- </para>
- </listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
- </para>
-
- <para>
- Programmers thrive on user feedback. If you are interested in a
- facility that you don't see mentioned here, or if there's something
- you think we could do better, please drop us a mail. Better still,
- implement it and send us the patches.
- </para>
- <para>
- If you think it's all really neat, you're welcome to drop us a line
- saying that, too. You can email us on
- <email>info@indexdata.dk</email>
- or check the contact info at the end of this manual.
- </para>
-
- </sect1>
-</chapter>
+ </section>
+ </chapter>
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