This describes how SearchBoolean is implemented at Cornell as of today (30 April 2002).

Verb function: Submit a Query
Verb name: SearchBoolean
Verb version: 6.0
NSF-DFG-Math usage: mod
Fixed arguments: none
Keyword arguments: see below
MIMETYPE response: text/xml
Status Codes responses: 200, 400

Verb Description:

Specifies a search request to the index server. Keyword Arguments are a set of bibliographic fields and values specifying the search criteria. Returns a structured response that is a list of each document that matches the search criteria. Each element of the list has the following contents:

• The handle of the document.
• The relevance information of the document for the specific query, if available.
• The free-text title of the document, if available
• The author(s) of the document, if available. Each author is in last, first middle format.
• The date of publication of the document in ISO 8601 format. The exact meaning of the term "date of publication" is determined by the administrator of the index service. It is included in the record that is returned so that user interface services may use the date for ordering of a result set.

Note that clients should not assume any logical ordering of the records returned.

Bibliographic Field Arguments:

Valid bibliographic field arguments can vary among index servers. The Describe-Verb verb returns the set of field arguments for a particular server. The minimal and standard set of bibliographic field arguments is as follows:

• Parameters (available in enumerated form, as in field1, field2, etc.)
  • field
  • value
  • boolean [NSF/DFG = operator]
• Fields searched
  • title (req)
  • author (req)
  • abstract (opt)
  • subject (opt)
  • keywords
  • anywhere [NSF/DFG = fullbib (req); does not include full-text] Fields not implemented:
  • pubtype (req, indicates whether monograph or serial)
  • language (req)
  • pubdate (req)
  • publisher (req)
  • itemno (opt)
• Operators
  • and (req)
  • or (req) Operators not implemented:
  • not (opt)
  • within (opt)
  • including (opt)

Scope Argument:

Two additional fields are available:

authority

the name of the authority in the index server to which the search is to be limited. The default is all authorities. The authority argument may be repeated, in which case the the search is carried out in each authority (effectively or’ing the authority arguments).

added-after

limits the list to those handles for documents that were added or modified since time, a universal time expressed in ISO 8601 format. If the server is not able to determine date of modification to the resolution of a day, or if the server is not able to selectively extract records on a time scale of a day, the server may return additional records, e.g. all those modified during the week, month, or even century containing the date.

Rules for bibliographic field matching: A token in a field is either an unquoted word or a quoted string. Tokens are matched to bibliographic entries according to the following rules:

• Words or phrases are matched exactly as submitted; the wild card symbol * should be used to indicate truncation.

Examples

Example Request:

Protocol=Dienst&Service=Index&ver=6.0&verb=SearchBoolean&field1=author&value1=davis&op1=or&field2=author&value2=fox 

Example Request:

Protocol=Dienst&Service=Index&ver=6.0&verb=SearchBoolean&field1=author&value1=donald&op1=and&field2=title&value2=robot 

Example Request:

Protocol=Dienst&Service=Index&ver=6.0&verb=SearchBoolean&field1=author&value1=donald&op1=or&field2=title&value2=computer+vision&op2=and&field3=authority&value3=xxx 

Example Response:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

  <SearchBoolean version="6.0">

    <record>

       <handle>euclid.mathbk/1112</handle>

       <rank>2857</rank>

       <author>Doe, J.</author>

       <author>Public, J. Q.</author>

       <title>Math Book One</title>

       <date>1888</date>

    </record>

    <record>

       <handle>euclid.mathbk/1110</handle>

       <rank>2859</rank>

       <author>Mouse, M.</author>

       <author>Disney, W.</author>

       <title>Math Book Two</title>

       <date>1879</date>

    </record>

  </SearchBoolean>