Hi,
We are developing a general API management tool to provide different
APIs (unAPI, SRU, OAI-PMH...) with different record formats (MARC, MODS,
DC...) to our databases. We now stumbled upon some confusion regarding
XML formats. The basic question is "what is a format and how do you
refer to it?"
I came to the conclusion that at least SRU schema identifiers are
useless. In addition you can extract XML namespace URIs from XML
Schemas, so all you need to identify a format is a link to its XML Schema.
I wrote a more detailed blog posting about this at
http://jakoblog.de/2011/02/24/xml-schema-vs-library-apis-oai-pmhsruunapi/
Does anyone of you relies on SRU schema identifiers when consuming SRU?
I think at least for XML-based formats we should only use the XML Schema
as authoritative reference. Sure there are different applications of
variants of one schema, but then it makes no sense to use global
identifiers in addition to local names.
Jakob
--
Jakob Voß <jakob.v...@gbv.de>, skype: nichtich
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de
