DOCUMENT DETAILS
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Document title |
MODELS Library Interoperability Profile Family |
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Author(s) |
E. Davidson (Fretwell-Downing) |
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Version |
1.3 |
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Date |
03-Apr-97 |
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Status |
Working |
DOCUMENT HISTORY
Table of Contents
This family of profiles specifies rules aimed at improving the reliability of Z39.50 search results in order to gain large scale inter-operability. A family of profiles is proposed in order to define gradually increasing levels of inter-operability and conformance and to encourage implementations to follow the same path when providing increased levels of functionality.
The primary scope of the profile is for UK library inter-operability for search and retrieve - ie it has a specific national focus. However the only element of the profile that has a national bias is the requirement for support of UK-, or US-MARC as record syntaxes, relaxing this requirement should allow internationalisation of the profile.
This family of profiles is intended for use either as a self-contained profile or for reference by other profiles. The document itself is self-contained but includes significant material from the ATS-1 profile and the Bib-1 implementors agreement (the latter is included as an appendix). All recommendations within this profile are consistent with ATS-1 and the Bib-1 agreement, however the Bib-1 agreement, which provides a mapping of Bib-1 onto US-MARC has been extended to include a mapping on to UK-MARC.
The Models Profile Family can be summarised as:
The general rationale is that the profile family provide an incremental level of inter-operable facilities for search and retrieve (the fourth level providing dynamically configured interoperability). Note that the Models family is aimed at providing highly inter-operable search and retrieve as a kernel for other services. For this reason all Extended Services (in particular Item Order) are not considered within scope for the Models profiles.
The Models profiles have taken input from:
The DALI project (Document And Library Integration) - EC Framework III Libraries Programme.
The ONE project (OPAC Network for Europe) - EC Framework III Libraries Programme.
The UNIverse project - EC Framework IV Libraries Programme.
The MODELS project - Elib Programme.
To be conformant to a member of the profile family a system must perform actions as defined in this document. Conformance is effectively defined by two sets of criteria:
· When a target does support an attribute combination, the semantics of the service provided must correspond to the definition within the profile. For example if an origin requests an author search the intent of this profile is that the target will execute the search based on an agreed concept of what constitutes such a search. The target must not perform a semantically different search (unless the origin has specifically allowed it to through use of the semantic indicator).
· When a target does not support an attribute combination, it should respond with the appropriate diagnostic message. It must not either return a successful search with zero hits, or perform a different search.
This latter point has significant hidden complexity for databases that have been constructed over a large period of time. The target must regard the semantics of a submitted request as:
· 'retrieve all those items that have been indexed against this element in the specified access point'
· 'retrieve all those items that should be indexed against this element in the specified access point'
If a search is submitted for all items at 'Dewey 320' then the target must respond as follows:
· If the access point is not supported then return the appropriate diagnostic message.
· If the access point is supported then return the matching records.
· If the access point is supported but the index is not fully populated (for example because of changing cataloguing practices over a number of years) then the target should still respond with records that match the search criteria.
The following levels of conformance to the profile family can be defined:
· Not conformant - either a target performs a search according to different semantic rules, or when an unsupported attribute combination is searched the target does not provide the correct response.
· Conformant - the target always provides the correct response to unsupported attributes and the attribute combinations that are supported within the profile family follow the semantic rules specified.
· Fully Conformant - All the attribute combinations in the profile are supported according to the semantic rules.
The following table shows the varying levels of conformance to the level-1 and level-2 profiles that can be achieved by a target.
For purposes of this profile, search primitives are defined as combinations consisting of a single Bib-1 Use attribute, a Structure attribute, and a Relation attribute. The profile specifies that searches can be performed using arbitrary Boolean combinations of these search primitives. The following section defines the search primitives for the Level 1 and Level 2 profile.
The primitives are separated into logical sections:
The general approach is to produce logically consistent subsets of the Bib-1 attribute set. Thus for example once one specific name type attribute is included in the profile (eg Personal Author), then all other name type attributes are included (Corporate and Conference Author).
For 'unstructured' text fields such as Title fields level 1 conformance generally provides exact match/known item searching through the 'Phrase' structure attribute. The level 2 profile provides keyword searching through the 'Word' and 'Word List' structure attributes.
The 'Server-choice' attribute is included in the level-2 profile to provide a broad, unstructured search capability.
(For purposes of this profile "Boolean query" refers to a Z39.50 type-1 query with multiple operands linked by Boolean operators).
For Name Searching the following use attributes are specified (see Appendix for full list of attribute definitions for Bib-1).
For purposes of this profile, when the structure attribute "name (normalized)" is supplied (in the Author-normalized attribute combination) the following normalization is implied:
Names of persons are formulated according to Rule 22.4 of AACR2, and names of corporate bodies and conferences are formulated according to Rule 24.1A of AACR2. A normalized name is all or the first part of a complete name formulated according to these rules.
For Title searching the following use attributes are specified (see Appendix for full list of attribute definitions for Bib-1).
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Level 1 | ||||
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Primitive Name |
Use |
Structure |
Relation |
Description |
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Known Title |
(4) |
(1) |
Equal (3) |
Exact match on full title entry. |
For subject searching the following use attributes are specified (see Appendix for full list of attribute definitions for Bib-1).
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Use |
Value |
Definition |
USMARC Tag(s) |
UKMARC Tag(s) |
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Subject |
21 |
The primary topic on which a work is focused. |
600, 610, 611, 630, 650, 651, 653, 654, 655, 656, 657, 69X |
653, 655, 660, 661, 668, 695 |
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Level 1 | ||||
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Primitive Name |
Use |
Structure |
Relation |
Description |
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Known General Subject |
(21) |
(1) |
Equal (3) |
Exact match on any subject heading entry. |
For Classification searching the following use attributes are specified (see Appendix for full list of attribute definitions for Bib-1).
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Level 1 |
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NONE |
For control number searching the following use attributes are specified (see Appendix for full list of attribute definitions for Bib-1).
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Level 1 |
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NONE |
For date searching the following use attributes are specified (see Appendix for full list of attribute definitions for Bib-1).
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Use |
Value |
Definition |
USMARC Tag(s) |
UKMARC Tag(s) |
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Date-publication |
31 |
The date (usually year) in which a document is published |
533$d |
008/07-10, 260$d |
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Level 1 |
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NONE |
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Level 2 | ||||
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Primitive Name |
Use |
Structure |
Relation |
Description |
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Publication Date |
(31) |
(5) |
Greater than (5) |
Search for date comparisons, with only year mandated. |
A broad search capability is provided through the 'Server-Choice' attribute:
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Level 1 |
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NONE |
A system implementing this profile must support:
Both target and origin must support bib-1 attributes as prescribed in section 3.
The origin must always accept the object identifier for the bib-1 diagnostic set (regardless of the protocol version in force). In addition, when version 3 is in force the origin must accept the object identifier for the diagnostic format diag-1.
When version 3 is in force the target must be able to return either bib-1 or diag-1 diagnostics, as prescribed in 6.2.
Conformance requirements that pertain to version 2 are specified in section 5. A system may optionally implement version 3; conformance requirements that pertain to version 3 are specified in section 6.
The origin and target must support at least one of the following record syntaxes:
US-MARC; UK-MARC; SUTRS
The origin and target must support these two Element Set Names:
"B" for Brief and "F" for Full.
Brief records may only contain the following details:
Author, Title, Publication Date.
Full records may contain as much information as the server is willing to send.
For the Level-1 profile a system must support a value of 4096 for the Init parameter preferred- message-size. This means
If the origin proposes a value of 4096, the target must accept that value (i.e. must respond with the same value).
5.6.2 If Origin Proposes less than 4096
If the origin proposes a value less than 4096:
· The target may accept the proposed value.
· The target may alternatively respond with a larger value, but not greater than 4096, and if so, the origin must accept the target response.
· The target may not respond with a value less than the proposed value.
5.6.3 If Origin Propsoses Greater than 4096
If the origin proposes a value greater than 4096:
· The target may accept that value.
· The target may alternatively propose a lower value, but not less than 4096, and if so, the origin must accept the target response.
· The target may not respond with a value greater than the proposed value.
Both origin and target must support the following basic transactions:
· Present
An origin must be able to formulate a type-1 query with a single operand consisting of an attribute combination and term, fore ach of the following attribute combinations as defined in 3.3:
· at least one of Author-normalized and Author-nonNormalized.
An origin is not required to formulate a boolean query. When the origin does send a boolean query, where each operand is constructed as described in 5.1.1, the associated target procedures are specified in 5.2.3.
A target must support the bib-1 attribute set. This requirement does not imply that the target must support any specific attributes, with the following exception: the target must support the Relation attribute 'equal'.
When the target receives a type-1 query with a single operand consisting of an attribute combination and term where the attribute combination is of those listed in 5.1.1:
6.2.2.1 Target Cannot support both Use and Structure
If the target cannot process the query because it does not support one or both of the Use attribute and Structure attribute, it should fail the search and return a diagnostic from the bib-1 diagnostic set, either 114: "unsupported Use attribute", or 118: "unsupported Structure attribute", as appropriate. Notes:
1.In the case where the target does not support either attribute, the target may select which of the two diagnostics to return.
2.This specific diagnostic requirement is waived when the target considers some other error condition to take precedence (for example, "permanent system error") in which case the target must return an appropriate diagnostic describing that condition.
If the target supports both the supplied Use and Structure attribute (and there are no error conditions that would otherwise cause the target to fail the search), but there are no records located by the search, the target should indicate "no records" (i.e.search-status = success; result-count = 0) rather than fail the search and return a diagnostic.
If the target receives a boolean query where each operand is constructed as described in 5.1.1:
6.2.3.1 Target Cannot Support Query
If the target cannot process the query because it cannot support boolean queries, or cannot support the specific boolean operators, or cannot process one of the operands, it should return an appropriate diagnostic; in the case of multiple errors, the target may select which error condition to report.
If the target can process the query but there are no records located, the target should indicate "no records" (i.e. search-status = success; result- count = 0) rather than fail the search and return a diagnostic.
When version 3 is in force, the origin should be able to formulate queries as specified in 5.1.1, without including a semantic action indicator. The origin may also, optionally, formulate queries with a semantic action indicator. If the value of the indicator is 1 (May not substitute), the associated target procedures are specified in 6.2. If the value is other than 1, the query is outside the scope of this profile.
When version 3 is in force, when the target receives a query as specified in 3 which either:
· does not include a semantic action indicator, or
· includes the semantic action indicator 1 (May not substitute),
The semantic action indicator refers to the ASN.1 identifier 'semanticAction' within the choice 'complex' within 'attributeValue' within 'attributeType' within the type AttributeElement in the APDU definitions. SemanticAction is meaningful only for version 3 of Z39.50.
Interpretation of other queries is not addressed by this profile.
Exception: If the target cannot process the query because it does not support an attribute or attribute combination, then as an alternative to using a bib-1 diagnostic, the target may use the diag-1 diagnostic 1005 ("attribute combination not supported") to report this condition. When using diag-1 diagnostic 1005 the target may optionally suggest one or more alternative attribute combinations. For example, if the target does not support the Use attribute 'Author' but does support one or more of the Use attributes 'Author- name personal', 'Author-name corporate' or 'Author-name conference' (bib-1 use attributes 1004, 1005, or 1006 respectively) it may report this via diag-1 diagnostic 1005.