[Koha-bugs] [Bug 18202] New: Define profiles for Z39.50 server targets

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.koha-community.org]

https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=18202

            Bug ID: 18202
           Summary: Define profiles for Z39.50 server targets
 Change sponsored?: ---
           Product: Koha
           Version: master
          Hardware: All
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P5 - low
         Component: Z39.50 / SRU / OpenSearch Servers
          Assignee: gmcharlt at gmail.com
          Reporter: dcook at prosentient.com.au
        QA Contact: testopia at bugs.koha-community.org
                CC: m.de.rooy at rijksmuseum.nl

Different Z39.50 servers support different use attributes using different
profiles. 

NorZIG: http://www.norzig.no/profiles/profile2.1.html
Libraries Australia (LA):
http://www.nla.gov.au/librariesaustralia/services/search/z3950/
Library of Congress (LOC): https://www.loc.gov/z3950/lcserver.html

More profiles: https://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/profiles/profiles.html

In the case of Libraries Australia and Library of Congress, the profiles are
different between bibliographic databases and authority databases, and this can
be traced back to differences in the functional areas of the Bath profile: 
http://web.archive.org/web/20080218122658/http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/bath/tp-bath2-e.htm

For instance, Libraries Australia claims to support "Functional Area D
(Authority Record Search & Retrieval) to Level 1" 
http://web.archive.org/web/20080219085710/http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/bath/tp-bath2.18-e.htm#a

It doesn't appear to in reality as it doesn't support use attribute 1002 (while
the Library of Congress does support this use attribute).

The Library of Congress appears to be more in line with Functional Area D
(Authority Record Search & Retrieval) to Level 2: 
http://web.archive.org/web/20080219085716/http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/bath/tp-bath2.21-e.htm

It doesn't look like LOC perfectly adheres to Level 2, but I'd say it does up
to 99.99%. It also supports a extra attributes belonging to local indexes.

Anyway, here's the problem:

LOC use attributes 1,2, and 3, but LA does not support these attributes. 

On the other hand, LA supports 1003, 1004, 1005, and 1006, but LOC does not.

LOC supports 1002, but LA does not.

We need to be able to define profiles on a server by server basis. In fact,
this is even recommended by Libraries Australia: "Step 4. Configure your Bib-1
Search Attributes (if required):".

--

I don't think it would be that difficult to define profiles. We'd have a table
with id, profile name, a name/index/description column, and a use attribute
column. Then we could add a foreign key to z3950servers to specify the profile. 

We'd need to do a different query for each server target but that would be easy
enough on its own.

The difficulty may lie in what to do about the Z39.50 search form. Not all
"names" would be supported by all targets. Bug 18096
(https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=18096) also mentions
some local attributes. We don't have a way of specifying those in the search
form at the moment, and obviously those local attributes would be local to that
particular server. I suppose we could dynamically create the search form... but
again not all names will correspond to all servers. I suppose we could just add
that caveat. We could also be better with our presentation of results. If we
get an error code of unsupported use attribute from a target server, we could
surface that to users.

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