Re: [Koha-devel] z39.50 client: extended services

[Roger Horne]

On Wed 13 Jul, RC Higgins wrote:
> 
> I'm interested in utilizing the Extended Services portion of the z39.50
> protocol.  I understand that some work is being done on koha's client.
> Are there any plans to implement ES for v3.0's z client?  ES does not
> seem to be implemented in Net::z39.50 or in the zoom api.  

Slightly off topic, but I recently installed 2.2.3 after not using Koha for
some time: the previous version was at least a year ago. The z3950 client
seems to be worse than it was at finding data: even thought the daemon is
running it will sit there for ages with that infuriating "?? to go"
displaying on screen and often will not find data that I am sure should be
in one of the servers it is looking in.

Several years ago MJ Ray suggested replacing the daemon with a z3950 program
that was called when needed: has this idea been completely dropped? 

It may be, of course, that I have set up the client incorrectly for one or
more of the servers. Are there any detailed instructions anywhere? 

In particular I note that if the standard scheme is set up for the intranet
the client will set the download to use MARC21 by default while if it is set
up as NPL, MARC21 is not an option, and the default is USMARC. Does this
make a difference? ie will some servers refuse to send data in particular
versions of MARC and will Koha translate between them? And if a server is
listed as only sending data using GRS-1 or SUTRS etc and not MARC, does that
mean that it cannot be used with the Koha client? see eg
http://copac.ac.uk/interfaces/z39.50/zed-support/ under "Record Syntaxes".
(I have been told that COPAC is the biggest catalogue of academic books in
the UK.)

Can I suggest that in the next version the "checked" flag under "Add server"
be set as true by default (which is presumably what most people will want).
Am I right in thinking that the number in the next line (the order of
display) makes no difference to the search itself?

And finally, does the three seconds used by the daemon/script prevent data
from being collected from slow servers, ie is the connection dropped before
they can reply? If so, which script is it to be found in?

And yet another thing :-)

Would it be possible for the "found" display to show more detail, and if so
which file needs altering? I search for textbooks and if a library has a
particular textbook it may well have ten editions or more of it -- which
will be displayed in a random order. It would be useful if before clicking
on "add biblio" one could ensure that one was loading the correct edition.


Roger
-- 
Roger Horne, 11 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3QB
http://hrothgar.co.uk/YAWS/
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