§-ajaxdev;
- <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, its webservices derivatives,
- SRU/SRW and SOLR servers exposing Lucene indexes. 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. But you can also use Pazpar2 to
- connect to hundreds of resources that do not support standard
- protocols.
- </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?
- Some 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>
-
- <para>
- Index Data continues to advocate the support of open standards. We
- work with database vendors to support standards, so you don't have
- to worry about programming against non-standard services. We also
- provide tools (see <ulink
- url="http://www.indexdata.com/simpleserver">SimpleServer</ulink>)
- which make it comparatively easy to build gateways against servers
- with non-standard behavior. Again, we encourage you to share any
- work you do in this direction.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- But the bottom line is that working with non-standard resources in
- metasearching is really, really hard. If you want to build a
- project with Pazpar2, and you need access to resources with
- non-standard interfaces, we can help. We run gateways to more than
- 2,000 popular, commercial databases and other resources,
- making it simple
- to plug them directly into Pazpar2. For a small annual fee per
- database, we can help you establish connections to your licensed
- resources. Meanwhile, you can help! If you build your own
- standards-compliant gateways, host them for others, or share the
- code! And tell your vendors that they can save everybody money and
- increase the appeal of their resources by supporting standards.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- There are those who will ask us why we are using Z39.50 as our
- switchboard language rather than a different protocol. Basically,
- we believe that Z39.50 is presently the most widely implemented
- information retrieval protocol that has the level of functionality
- required to support a good metasearching experience (structured
- searching, structured, well-defined results). It is also compact and
- efficient, and there is a very broad range of tools available to
- implement it.
- </para>
- </section>
-
<section id="unicode">
<title>Unicode Compliance</title>
<para>