Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
Godmar Back wrote: Could you share, briefly, what this API actually does (if doing so doesn't violate your NDA?) Well, their brief summary is at http://www.serialssolutions.com/ss_360_search_xml.html Have you seen that yet? They have also for Core and Link which I haven't looked at at all yet. For Search, your app sends a request, their server returns a result set - as the aforementioned page says, it basically seems to allow more customization of these 360 services than is available via the stock web searches. We want to use it to deliver search results from multiple sources (at this point ILS and SerSol) on one page. -- 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]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
Yitzchak Schaffer wrote: 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. D'oh: here's the lowdown from SerSol: The terms of the NDA do not allow for client signatories to share of any information related to the proprietary nature of our API's with other clients. However, if you would like to share them with us we can make them available to other API clients upon request. I think down the road we may be able to come up with creative ways to do this - perhaps an API user's group, but for now we cannot allow sharing of this kind of information outside of your institution. -- 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]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
This is ironic given that their API is standards based. http://www.serialssolutions.com/ss_360_link_features.html What, exactly, are vendors worried about when they hide their API behind an NDA? Even more disturbing, why bother advertising your API at all if a community can't be built to create innovative new ideas around it? It's a wonder why libraries put up with any of this. -Ross. On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 12:19 PM, Yitzchak Schaffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yitzchak Schaffer wrote: 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. D'oh: here's the lowdown from SerSol: The terms of the NDA do not allow for client signatories to share of any information related to the proprietary nature of our API's with other clients. However, if you would like to share them with us we can make them available to other API clients upon request. I think down the road we may be able to come up with creative ways to do this - perhaps an API user's group, but for now we cannot allow sharing of this kind of information outside of your institution. -- 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]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
Ross Singer wrote: This is ironic given that their API is standards based. http://www.serialssolutions.com/ss_360_link_features.html What, exactly, are vendors worried about when they hide their API behind an NDA? Having seen the docs, I'm also somewhat mystified about what they're protecting. Perhaps whoever sets policy is too far removed from the developer/user base to have made a reasonable decision. -- 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]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
I find an API that you aren't allowed to share client code for to be pretty much useless. If I'm a part of any evaluation committees evaluating software purchases, I will certainly make that opinion known and justify why I think it's justified. My institution is not currently a SerSol customer for any products with APIs. (Although we are a customer of a product that eventually theoretically will have an API). I think existing SerSol customers should complain to SerSol about this. Hey, I might as well write a blog post explaining why an API you aren't allowed to share code for is practically useless... http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/api_license_useless/ There you go. Jonathan Ross Singer wrote: This is ironic given that their API is standards based. http://www.serialssolutions.com/ss_360_link_features.html What, exactly, are vendors worried about when they hide their API behind an NDA? Even more disturbing, why bother advertising your API at all if a community can't be built to create innovative new ideas around it? It's a wonder why libraries put up with any of this. -Ross. On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 12:19 PM, Yitzchak Schaffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yitzchak Schaffer wrote: 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. D'oh: here's the lowdown from SerSol: The terms of the NDA do not allow for client signatories to share of any information related to the proprietary nature of our API's with other clients. However, if you would like to share them with us we can make them available to other API clients upon request. I think down the road we may be able to come up with creative ways to do this - perhaps an API user's group, but for now we cannot allow sharing of this kind of information outside of your institution. -- 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
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]
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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
My impression, from a recent conversation with a Serials Solutions sales rep, is that Serials Solutions (or one of its 15 parent companies) bought WebFeat, and they will be merging all the WebFeat-exclusive connections into 360. Since we don't have either of those products, I can't say what that means in practice. -- Andrew Ashton Systems Librarian Scribner Library, Skidmore College (518)580-5505 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Cloutman, David Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 2:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes? 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
WebFeat does have an API but it is, ahem, incomplete. We are in the middle of a WebFeat deployment and we are using it. Anyone currently considering federated search would be well advised to wait for the new platform. Rich Ackerman Manager of Library Electronic Resources Alvin Sherman Library Nova Southeastern University 3100 Ray Ferraro, Jr. Boulevard Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 954-262-4536 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 2:54 PM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes? 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
Could you share, briefly, what this API actually does (if doing so doesn't violate your NDA?) - Godmar On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 1:40 PM, Yitzchak Schaffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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]
[CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions 360 API - PHP classes?
All: Does anyone have/know of PHP classes for searching the Serials Solutions 360 APIs, particularly Search? Thanks, -- 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]
