exciting news from the net-z3950 list:
I am very pleased to announce the availability of ZOOM-Perl: http://search.cpan.org/~mirk/Net-Z3950-ZOOM/This is an implementation of the ZOOM Abstract API for Perl, enabling information retrieval using a de-facto standard API over any of the Z39.50, SRU and SRW protocols. In fact, it's very similar to Net::Z3950, in that both provide APIs for building Z39.50 clients in Perl. The differences are twofold: 1. ZOOM-Perl has a different front-end, since it conforms to the ZOOM Abstract API rather than living in its own little world as Net::Z3950 does. (As a historical note, Net::Z3950 predates ZOOM, and was in effect the prototype for that effort.) 2. It also has a different back-end, being based on the ZOOM-C library that is part of the YAZ toolkit where Net::Z3950 was based on the low-level YAZ primitives. (Again, this is a luxury that Net::Z3950 didn't have because it predated ZOOM and prototyped the ZOOM interface that ZOOM-C implements.) Since there is no middle, it's apparent that new front-end and back-end mean that ZOOM-Perl is all new code, sharing no source with Net::Z3950; but they are, spiritually speaking, close cousins, even if they're not closely related by blood. To give an idea of how the APIs differ, here is a super-simple program in both dialects. First, the old API that you are all familiar with: use Net::Z3950; $conn = new Net::Z3950::Connection('server.host.name', 210) or die $!; $rs = $conn->search('@attr 1=4 dinosaur') or die $conn->errmsg(); my $n = $rs->size(); print "found $n records\n"; $rec = $rs->record(0) or die $rs->errmsg(); print $rec->render(); And now, the new ZOOM API: use ZOOM; eval { $conn = new ZOOM::Connection($host, $port) $conn->option(preferredRecordSyntax => "usmarc"); $rs = $conn->search_pqf('@attr 1=4 dinosaur'); $n = $rs->size(); print "found $n records\n"; print $rs->record(0)->render(); }; if ($@) { print "Error ", [EMAIL PROTECTED]>code(), ": ", [EMAIL PROTECTED]>message(), "\n"; } The two most obvious changes are that the class-names are preceded by ZOOM:: instead of Net::Z3950, and that errors are thrown as exceptions rather than checked line-by-line. Since neither of these is exactly rocket science, it shouldn't be hard for Net::Z3950 adepts to move across. With that in mind, I strongly suggest that all new applications should be built against the new ZOOM API instead of the old Net::Z3950 one. We at Index Data will be supporting ZOOM-Perl for the foreseeable future, but do not plan to make any further releases of Net::Z3950 (except possibly on last one that includes a big banner in the documentation saying "USE ZOOM-PERL INSTEAD". (Having said that, of course, the old software will always be around, and since it's open source, anyone else who'd like to adopt it and make new releases will be quite at liberty to do so.) We're pretty excited about ZOOM-Perl for several reasons, mostly because it is based on ZOOM-C and therefore inherits the benefits of several years' much more intensive development than has been spent on Net::Z3950. Among the facilities that ZOOM-Perl inherits are: - Sorting - Character-set handling - Translation between record syntaxes - Record update (for servers that support it) - Client-side CQL compilation. I am pleased to say that, like Net::Z3950, the new ZOOM-Perl module is and will remain free software, distributed under the same terms as Perl itself. Finally, I would like to thank LibLime, Meadville Public Library and Nelsonville Public Library for their contribution to this software: the libraries sponsored the development, and LibLime made it all possible by bringing the sponsors and developers together.
