Work on non-standard servers
authorSebastian Hammer <quinn@indexdata.com>
Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:12:51 +0000 (15:12 +0000)
committerSebastian Hammer <quinn@indexdata.com>
Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:12:51 +0000 (15:12 +0000)
doc/book.xml

index 752e359..94f3458 100644 (file)
@@ -9,13 +9,16 @@
      <!ENTITY % common SYSTEM "common/common.ent">
      %common;
 ]>
-<!-- $Id: book.xml,v 1.9 2007-04-10 08:59:35 adam Exp $ -->
+<!-- $Id: book.xml,v 1.10 2007-04-10 15:12:51 quinn Exp $ -->
 <book id="book">
  <bookinfo>
   <title>Pazpar2 - User's Guide and Reference</title>
   <author>
    <firstname>Sebastian</firstname><surname>Hammer</surname>
   </author>
+  <author>
+   <firstname>Adam</firstname><surname>Dickmeiss</surname>
+  </author>
   <releaseinfo>&version;</releaseinfo>
   <copyright>
    <year>&copyright-year;</year>
        can be fetched using the 'record' command.
       </para>
     </section>
+
+    <section id="nonstandard">
+      <title>Connecting to non-standard resources</title>
+      <para>
+        Pazpar2 uses Z39.50 as its switchboard language -- i.e. as far as it
+       is concerned, all resources speak Z39.50. It is, however, equipped
+       to handle a broad range of different server behavior, through
+       configurable query mapping and record normalization. If you develop
+       configuration, stylesheets, etc., for a new type of resources, we
+       encourage you to share your work.
+      </para>
+
+      <para>
+        For a growing number of resources, Z39.50 is all you need. Over the
+       last few years, a number of commercial, full-text resources have
+       implemented Z39.50. These can be used through pazpar2 with little or
+       no effort. Resources that use non-standard record formats will
+       require a bit of XSLT work, but that's all.
+      </para>
+
+      <para>
+        But what about resources that don't support Z39.50 at all? The NISO
+       SRU protocol is slowly gathering steam. Other resources might
+       support OpenSearch, private, XML/HTTP-based protocols, or something
+       else entirely. Some databases exist only as web user interfaces and
+         will require screen-scraping. Still others exist only as static
+         files, or perhaps as databases supporting the OAI-PMH protocol.
+         There is hope! Read on.
+      </para>
+    </section>
   </chapter> <!-- Using pazpar2 -->
 
  <reference id="reference">