1 %# $Id: home.mc,v 1.5 2007-03-14 17:24:11 mike Exp $
3 <b>IRSpy</b> maintains a registry of information retrieval
4 targets supporting standard IR protocols such as
5 <a href="http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/"
6 >ANSI/NISO Z39.50 (ISO 23950)</a>
8 <a href="http://www.loc.gov/sru"
9 >the SRU/SRW web services</a>.
10 Each registry entry consists of both mechanical information,
11 such as the indexes supported for searching and the record
12 syntax and schemas supported for retrievel, and metadata such as
13 database titles, authors and descriptions.
16 IRSpy supports editing of the metadata, and automatically
17 discovers mechanical information by probing the registered
18 targets using a set of feature-tests. Tests are implemented by
19 %# Link to /doc.html?module=ZOOM/IRSpy/Test.pm is not ready yet
21 so new tests can be added without changing the core code.
24 For efficiency, probing of targets is done in parallel, using a
25 pool of a few hundred concurrent connections which is refilled
26 from a queue whenever a target in the pool completes its tests.
27 Testing the entire current registry of 1908 targets takes about
28 three elapsed hours on commodity hardware (Intel CPU, 2.8 GHz,
29 256 Kb cache, 4 Mbit/s network connection).
32 IRSpy's Web user interface allows users to
33 <a href="/find.html">search</a>
35 <a href="/find.html?dc.title=^a*&_sort=dc.title&_count=9999&_search=Search">browse</a>
36 the registry, and to view
37 <a href="http://x.irspy.indexdata.com/stats.html">statistics</a>.
38 Authenticated users may also edit target data, run tests and add
39 new targets from the Web UI. A set of command-line tools is
40 also provided, together with facilities for re-running the tests
44 IRSpy is implemented in Perl, using the
45 <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~mirk/Net-Z3950-ZOOM/"
47 module to access Z39.50 and SRU/SRW databases. The registry
48 database is implemented using
49 <a href="http://indexdata.com/zebra/"
51 also accessed using ZOOM-Perl. The database
52 <a href="/doc.html?module=ZOOM/IRSpy/WebService.pod"
53 >can be interrogated using SRU/SRW<a/>:
55 <a href="http://srw.cheshire3.org/profiles/ZeeRex/"
56 >ZeeRex application profile</a>,
57 and can supply registry records both in extended
58 <a href="http://explain.z3950.org/dtd/"
61 <a href="http://www.niso.org/standards/standard_detail.cfm?std_id=816"
64 <a href="http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/record-schemas.html"