X-Server Notes

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Sept 01, 2006Version comment
1 min read

MetaLib X-Server

Using the MetaLib X-Server as a searchable "repository" in an implementation of the OKI Repository OSID. Repository OSID Consumers are able to take advantage of the X-Server's API to search for records within customizable search sets. (more on this to come...)

  • Advantages
    • custom interface and custom functionality.
    • dealing with URL queries and XML is relatively simple.
    • some level of documentation for the X-Server API exists and is easy to access.
  • Disadvantages
    • X-Server API documentation could be more robust by providing more examples of edge-case use.
    • X-Server xml encoding
      • X-Server misses invalid XML character data
      • xmlns references are repeated for each record returned; records do not contain proper MARC21slim xml - these issues cause XML parsers to throw errors.
    • Some field names are counter-intuitive (base_001 specifies a database id)
    • the merge command does not have an appending merge command. This makes it difficult to page through records retrieved from the X-Server asynchronously.

SFX API

  • planning on using the SFX API to produce custom menus due to the difficulty of customizing SFX's Menu and primarily due to SFX's inability to display different Menu's for OpenURLs coming from different sources (different referrer ids).