1 %# $Id: home.mc,v 1.6 2007-03-14 17:25:53 mike Exp $
4 <b>IRSpy</b> maintains a registry of information retrieval
5 targets supporting standard IR protocols such as
6 <a href="http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/"
7 >ANSI/NISO Z39.50 (ISO 23950)</a>
9 <a href="http://www.loc.gov/sru"
10 >the SRU/SRW web services</a>.
11 Each registry entry consists of both mechanical information,
12 such as the indexes supported for searching and the record
13 syntax and schemas supported for retrievel, and metadata such as
14 database titles, authors and descriptions.
17 IRSpy supports editing of the metadata, and automatically
18 discovers mechanical information by probing the registered
19 targets using a set of feature-tests. Tests are implemented by
20 %# Link to /doc.html?module=ZOOM/IRSpy/Test.pm is not ready yet
22 so new tests can be added without changing the core code.
25 For efficiency, probing of targets is done in parallel, using a
26 pool of a few hundred concurrent connections which is refilled
27 from a queue whenever a target in the pool completes its tests.
28 Testing the entire current registry of 1908 targets takes about
29 three elapsed hours on commodity hardware (Intel CPU, 2.8 GHz,
30 256 Kb cache, 4 Mbit/s network connection).
33 IRSpy's Web user interface allows users to
34 <a href="/find.html">search</a>
36 <a href="/find.html?dc.title=^a*&_sort=dc.title&_count=9999&_search=Search">browse</a>
37 the registry, and to view
38 <a href="http://x.irspy.indexdata.com/stats.html">statistics</a>.
39 Authenticated users may also edit target data, run tests and add
40 new targets from the Web UI. A set of command-line tools is
41 also provided, together with facilities for re-running the tests
45 IRSpy is implemented in Perl, using the
46 <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~mirk/Net-Z3950-ZOOM/"
48 module to access Z39.50 and SRU/SRW databases. The registry
49 database is implemented using
50 <a href="http://indexdata.com/zebra/"
52 also accessed using ZOOM-Perl. The database
53 <a href="/doc.html?module=ZOOM/IRSpy/WebService.pod"
54 >can be interrogated using SRU/SRW<a/>:
56 <a href="http://srw.cheshire3.org/profiles/ZeeRex/"
57 >ZeeRex application profile</a>,
58 and can supply registry records both in extended
59 <a href="http://explain.z3950.org/dtd/"
62 <a href="http://www.niso.org/standards/standard_detail.cfm?std_id=816"
65 <a href="http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/record-schemas.html"