[CODE4LIB] facets in Atom feeds
Someone recently on this list was saying something about ways to embed facets in for instance Atom feeds. I was reminded of that, because checking out an Atom feed from Google Books Data API, in Internet Explorer... Internet Explorer displays 'facet' type restrictions for it, under a heading Filter by category. It also displays sort options, apparently somehow the feed is advertising it's sort options too in a way that a client like IE can act upon? Haven't looked into the details, but here's an example feed: http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=LCCN07037314 Look at it in IE for instance. So whatever's being done here is apparently already somewhat standard, at least IE recognizes what Google does? I'd encourage SRU or whoever to follow their lead. [I agree that simply copying the Solr API for a standard like SRU is not the way to go -- Solr is an application that supports various low-level things that are not appropriate in that level of detail for a standard like SRU or what have you, at least not until they've been shown to be needed.]
Re: [CODE4LIB] facets in Atom feeds
-Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind [I agree that simply copying the Solr API for a standard like SRU is not the way to go -- Solr is an application that supports various low-level things that are not appropriate in that level of detail for a standard like SRU or what have you, at least not until they've been shown to be needed.] Sadly, the use case for me was a group of SOLR developers who wanted an SRU interface and claimed to want SOLR facets exposed. Now, if as I suspect, SOLR facets are overengineered and have features that have not been shown to be needed, then I've overengineered too. But I don't feel like I can impose an extreme programming attitude to their requirement and make them justify each SOLR feature. Ralph
Re: [CODE4LIB] facets in Atom feeds
I do not think Solr facets are over-engineered. Trying to hack away to make Solr facets act kind of sort of like traditional browse search, I'm using all the features that are there, and wish they had a few more features -- in some ways they are 'under-engineered'. I just think Solr facet interface is actually a fairly low-level interface at present, that may not be suitable for a standard like SRU. I've needed those features, but I haven't needed em through SRU. What features did your developers actually need through SRU? They claimed to need complete access to every Solr facet feature, directly? I mean, some SRU end points may be backed by an SQL rdbms. There are some things you can do with SQL that you can't do with SRU. Does that mean that SRU ought to expose a parameter that lets you send arbitrary SQL queries? Nope, for a variety of reasons. Including the obvious one that some SRU end points are NOT backed by an SQL rdbms. And some SRU endpoints -- including ones that might be able to expose some facetting behavior -- are not backed by Solr, and simply mimicing the Solr API (which is even less of a 'standard' than SQL) and requiring SRU end-points that want to support facets to mimic it, is not appropriate. There will still be things you could only do wtih direct SQL access (or direct Solr access), and not with SRU. That's just the nature of the game. It can't be solved by trying to shove SQL or Solr's own API into SRU/CQL. On 3/3/2011 2:42 PM, LeVan,Ralph wrote: -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind [I agree that simply copying the Solr API for a standard like SRU is not the way to go -- Solr is an application that supports various low-level things that are not appropriate in that level of detail for a standard like SRU or what have you, at least not until they've been shown to be needed.] Sadly, the use case for me was a group of SOLR developers who wanted an SRU interface and claimed to want SOLR facets exposed. Now, if as I suspect, SOLR facets are overengineered and have features that have not been shown to be needed, then I've overengineered too. But I don't feel like I can impose an extreme programming attitude to their requirement and make them justify each SOLR feature. Ralph
Re: [CODE4LIB] facets in Atom feeds
That's pretty cool, but I had to fire up Parallels on my Mac to see it in MSIE. For those that may not have Windows readily available, this is what it looks like: http://twitpic.com/45r6sn Peter On Mar 3, 2011, at 1:51 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: Someone recently on this list was saying something about ways to embed facets in for instance Atom feeds. I was reminded of that, because checking out an Atom feed from Google Books Data API, in Internet Explorer... Internet Explorer displays 'facet' type restrictions for it, under a heading Filter by category. It also displays sort options, apparently somehow the feed is advertising it's sort options too in a way that a client like IE can act upon? Haven't looked into the details, but here's an example feed: http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=LCCN07037314 Look at it in IE for instance. So whatever's being done here is apparently already somewhat standard, at least IE recognizes what Google does? I'd encourage SRU or whoever to follow their lead. [I agree that simply copying the Solr API for a standard like SRU is not the way to go -- Solr is an application that supports various low-level things that are not appropriate in that level of detail for a standard like SRU or what have you, at least not until they've been shown to be needed.] -- Peter Murray peter.mur...@lyrasis.orgtel:+1-678-235-2955 Ass't Director, Technology Services Development http://dltj.org/about/ Lyrasis --Great Libraries. Strong Communities. Innovative Answers. The Disruptive Library Technology Jesterhttp://dltj.org/ Attrib-Noncomm-Share http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Re: [CODE4LIB] facets in Atom feeds
So that seems to just be using the atom:category element, which is clever, but it wouldn't give you facet counts for the total results set (just for the returned page). It's possible to have categories across the entire result set (they'd be at the feed level, rather than the entry level), but you wouldn't have any counts or links for your filtered search results and you'd need some way to turn the scheme attribute into facet field, although all of these are pretty easily achievable (they'd just really need an XML namespace and some consensus). Take: category scheme='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind' term='http://schemas.google.com/books/2008#volume'/ You could easily do something like: category scheme='http://example.org/facets/fields#subject' term='History' ex:facetCount=1024 ex:href='http://example.org/search?q=your+searchfct[subject]=History' / or whatever. -Ross. On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Peter Murray peter.mur...@lyrasis.org wrote: That's pretty cool, but I had to fire up Parallels on my Mac to see it in MSIE. For those that may not have Windows readily available, this is what it looks like: http://twitpic.com/45r6sn Peter On Mar 3, 2011, at 1:51 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: Someone recently on this list was saying something about ways to embed facets in for instance Atom feeds. I was reminded of that, because checking out an Atom feed from Google Books Data API, in Internet Explorer... Internet Explorer displays 'facet' type restrictions for it, under a heading Filter by category. It also displays sort options, apparently somehow the feed is advertising it's sort options too in a way that a client like IE can act upon? Haven't looked into the details, but here's an example feed: http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=LCCN07037314 Look at it in IE for instance. So whatever's being done here is apparently already somewhat standard, at least IE recognizes what Google does? I'd encourage SRU or whoever to follow their lead. [I agree that simply copying the Solr API for a standard like SRU is not the way to go -- Solr is an application that supports various low-level things that are not appropriate in that level of detail for a standard like SRU or what have you, at least not until they've been shown to be needed.] -- Peter Murray peter.mur...@lyrasis.org tel:+1-678-235-2955 Ass't Director, Technology Services Development http://dltj.org/about/ Lyrasis -- Great Libraries. Strong Communities. Innovative Answers. The Disruptive Library Technology Jester http://dltj.org/ Attrib-Noncomm-Share http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
