Z39.50: Distributed Search

Library-developed federated search protocol

• Standard messaging, wire protocol via TCP

• Shared content semantic knowledge

• Basic: send a query, get a results set, get a record from results set

Problems

• Standard not complete - semantic inconsistencies in implementation

• Complex definition of session interaction

• Unavailable servers

• Limited to speed of slowest server

• Requires a lot of post-processing

(see Z39.50 Made Simple)

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Peer, Meta and Distributed Search
Infonortics Search Engines Meeting, 2002
Avi Rappoport SearchTools.com