Using ZeeRex with SRW

Author: Rob Sanderson <azaroth@liverpool.ac.uk>

Introduction

The commentary for the ZeeRex XML schema describes in detail all of the differences between describing Z39.50 and SRW. However, the SRW specific information is summarised below.

First of all, you should skim over the overview document before heading into the commentary about the schema. This commentary contains everything you need to know about how to use the schema, in a hopefully up to date and easy to follow fashion.

SRW Summary

Assuming that you do not want to know anything about how ZeeRex works with Z39.50, you can skip sections 5.2 and 6 in the commentary as they are specific to the older protocol. The rest, however, is pertinent to SRW.

The differences are:

• The protocol attribute on serverInfo should be SRW, SRU, or if both are supported at the same end point SRW/U.
• The transport attribute on serverInfo should be the protocol to put at the beginning of the URL for the database's service endpoint. For example http or https, among others.
• In the serverInfo/database field, the content is the path section of the URL to the SRW server, without the first / and up to the ?. For example cgi-bin/srw/l5r.cgi rather than the name of the database (l5r).
• In the indexInfo section, the set element is used to define the short names for context sets.
• Indexes have name elements to describe them, and the set attribute contains the short name of the context set.
• The schemaInfo section is used to describe the schemas supported by the server, including whether they can be used to sort or retrieve, their short name and their URI identifier. The recordInfo section is not used.
• The configInfo section has many different types which can be used. These should be familiar from the rest of the SRW and ZeeRex documentation.