Has that made you decide to hold off on API work with 360 search?
Me, I tend to forge forward anyway. If you're always waiting for the
next thing, you're always waiting. But I think the chances are fairly
good that the 360 Search API would remain. Does WebFeat even have an
API? Although if nobody's actually using the 360 Search API, I guess
SerSol doesn't have much motivation to continue to support it.
Except that it's a selling point. That's been my experience with
vendors. Everyone asks for an API, so some vendors want to provide an
API. But the API is usually so difficult to work with that it's
impossible to do anything with. And then few if any customers actually
use it. And then it's unsupported, and just gets worse and worse.
The way to fix this is to get more customers using it, of course, so the
vendor sees that they have to support it. Which is another reason I
don't like to postpone API use work.
Jonathan
Cloutman, David wrote:
Just as a note, before you write your code- We are in the process of
evaluating federated search tools, and one item we learned that Serials
Solutions and Webfeat are now owned by the same parent company. The
stories we are getting from the two vendors are a little different, but
essitially what we are hearing is that the two federated searching
products will be integrated into a single product within a year, and
that the two development teams will be merged. I do not know how this
will impact the API for 360 Link, since that appears to be a separate
module, but you may want to take this into consideration in planning
your development.
Good luck with your project,
- David
---
David Cloutman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Electronic Services Librarian
Marin County Free Library
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 11:14 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
I wouldn't be surprised either. But it's kind of important if they
actually want their APIs to be _used_ by anyone. Even if you can only
share with other SerSol customers. What's the point of having APIs if
the community can't share code they write to use them?
I am interested in incorporating SerSol 360 Link support into Umlaut,
although my institution is not a 360 Link customer. So I'm curious where
you end up with this, and if you can establish some allowed mechanism
for sharing SerSol API-client code, even if only with other SerSol
customers, that would be useful to all of us. Only SerSol customers
have any _use_ for the code of course, but if a part of Umlaut has to be
downloaded seperately only after you've somehow established yourself as
a SerSol customer--that gets tricky to manage.
Jonathan
Yitzchak Schaffer wrote:
From: Code for Libraries on behalf of Yitzchak Schaffer
Sent: Wed 4/2/2008 12:28 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
Does anyone have/know of PHP classes for searching the Serials
Solutions
360 APIs, particularly Search?
Okay, having not heard any affirmatives, I'm starting work on this.
I'm
an OOP and PHP noob, so I'm donning my flak jacket/dunce cap in
advance,
but I'll try to make this as useful to the community and comprehensive
as time and my ability allow. Assuming that Serials Solutions will
allow some kind of sharing for these - they make clients sign a NDA
before they show you the docs. I'm waiting to hear their response; I
would be surprised if they wouldn't allow sharing of something like
this
among clients.
--
Yitzchak Schaffer
Systems Librarian
Touro College Libraries
33 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10010
Tel (212) 463-0400 x230
Fax (212) 627-3197
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Email Disclaimer: http://www.co.marin.ca.us/nav/misc/EmailDisclaimer.cfm
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
