4 <b>IRSpy</b> to maintain a registry of information retrieval
5 targets supporting the standard IR protocol
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 database level information,
12 such as the indexes supported for searching and the record
13 syntax and schemas supported for retrieval, and record level
14 metadata such as titles, authors and descriptions.
17 IRSpy supports editing of record level metadata, and
18 automatically discovers database level information by probing
19 the registered targets using a set of feature-tests. Tests are
21 %# Link to /doc.html?module=ZOOM/IRSpy/Test.pm is not ready yet
23 so new tests can be added without changing the core code.
26 For efficiency, probing of targets is done in parallel, using a
27 pool of a few hundred concurrent connections which is refilled
28 from a queue whenever a target in the pool completes its tests.
29 Testing the entire current registry of 1908 targets takes about
30 three elapsed hours on commodity hardware (Intel CPU, 2.8 GHz,
31 256 Kb cache, 4 Mbit/s network connection).
34 IRSpy's Web user interface allows users to
35 <a href="/find.html">search</a>
37 <a href="/find.html?dc.title=^a*&_sort=dc.title&_count=9999&_search=Search">browse</a>
38 the registry, and to view
39 <a href="/stats.html">statistics</a>.
40 Authenticated users may also edit target data, run tests and add
41 new targets from the Web UI. A set of command-line tools is
42 also provided, together with facilities for re-running the tests
46 IRSpy is implemented in Perl, using the
47 <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~mirk/Net-Z3950-ZOOM/"
49 module to access Z39.50 and SRU/SRW databases. The registry
50 database is implemented using
51 <a href="http://indexdata.com/zebra/"
53 also accessed using ZOOM-Perl. The database
54 <a href="/doc.html?module=ZOOM/IRSpy/WebService.pod"
55 >can be interrogated using SRU/SRW<a/>:
57 <a href="http://srw.cheshire3.org/profiles/ZeeRex/"
58 >ZeeRex application profile</a>,
59 and can supply registry records both in extended
60 <a href="http://explain.z3950.org/dtd/"
63 <a href="http://www.niso.org/standards/standard_detail.cfm?std_id=816"
66 <a href="http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/record-schemas.html"