Thread View: comp.infosystems.wais
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Started by Robert Ayers
Wed, 23 Dec 1992 01:31
WAIS server returns *name* of document, rather than document?
Author: Robert Ayers
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 01:31
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 01:31
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I'm working on a WAIS server that I expected to be used locally, that is used on the LAN at Adobe Systems. The server will index documents that are already stored within the LAN-accessable NFS file system. It strikes me that, rather than having the WAIS-client ask the WAIS-server for the "hit" document's content (when the user says "View"), the client should ask for the full-path-name of the document and read the document itself (with NFS). Why have the server NFS-read the whole document and re-send the bytes down the Z39.50 connection? Do you-all think tht this might be a valuable extension to the WAIS protocol? I'm currently implementing this game by defining the document type "*TEXT" to mean "pointer to document of type TEXT" and returning the full path-name of the document-file when the client does a retrieve of a "*TEXT". This is a bit hokey, but within the current protocol syntax, so it's easy to do ... Bob
Re: WAIS server returns *name* of document, rather than document?
Author: Jonathan Goldman
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 12:16
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 12:16
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In article <1992Dec23.013115.13255@adobe.com> ayers@adobe.com (Robert Ayers) writes: From: ayers@adobe.com (Robert Ayers) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 01:31:15 GMT I'm working on a WAIS server that I expected to be used locally, that is used on the LAN at Adobe Systems. The server will index documents that are already stored within the LAN-accessable NFS file system. It strikes me that, rather than having the WAIS-client ask the WAIS-server for the "hit" document's content (when the user says "View"), the client should ask for the full-path-name of the document and read the document itself (with NFS). Why have the server NFS-read the whole document and re-send the bytes down the Z39.50 connection? You may have already figured this out but... You can get the filename out of the DOCID: in the public server the docid is just a string of "start-offset end-offset filename", so you could modify a client to just get the file itself, but... Do you-all think tht this might be a valuable extension to the WAIS protocol? You can't depend on this. For one, it's server specific. The protocol simply says that servers understand a docid that they produce. In fact, on the CM server the docid's are just indexes into a table on the server. In addition, there's no guarantee the files are local, or that the pathnames are meaningful. It's a hack you could do when you know the client and server are on the same LAN, but you must know this for it to work... And if the client and server are on teh same LAN, why not just do "local searching". The clients all have the search engine built-in, and retrieval will be strictly a "local" operation. (Local search is accomplished by leaving the :ip-name and :tcp-port fields empty in the source description structure, and using the full path prefix for the :database-name.) -- Jonny Goldman Thinking Machines Corporation jonathan@Think.com 1010 El Camino Real Suite 310 Developer Menlo Park, CA 94025 Wide Area Information Servers 415-329-9300x229
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