Machine-to-Machine Interfaces
Types of interface available at EDINA
Interfaces supported by EDINA Bibliographic Services
Interfaces supported by EDINA Multimedia Services
Types of interface available at EDINA
EDINA provides several machine-to-machine interfaces. These include:
- Z39.50 (ISO23950)
- A standard that defines a client/server based service and protocol for Information Retrieval. Z39.50 is widely
implemented in systems such as library catalogues and bibliographic databases, and is commonly used for federated searching.
Z39.50 is supported by Land Life Leisure, and SALSER, SUNCAT. - SRU
- A standard XML-focused search protocol for Internet search queries.
SRU is based on Z39.50 semantics, but is more modern, being based on
HTTP requests and responses, using the
CQL query language
and (usually) returning search results as XML records.
SRU is supported by JISC MediaHub. - OAI-PMH
- The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)
is a low-barrier mechanism for metadata harvesting. Whereas
Z39.50 and SRU are designed to make a specific search, and retrieve
matching records in relatively small numbers, OAI-PMH is designed to
allow the extraction ("harvesting") of all of the records from a
database. OAI-PMH provides six types of request ("verbs"), made by
HTTP, that can be used to investigate the metadata available from an
interface. Records are retrieved as XML.
OAI-PMH is supported by JISC MediaHub.
Bibliographic Services
- Land Life Leisure (Z39.50)
- SALSER (Z39.50)
- SUNCAT
