Query Mediator Service

The query mediator service performs searches over the entire collection. For more information, please consult: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/cdlrg/dienst/protocols/DienstProtocol.htm#4.3%20Query%20Mediator%20Service.

 Describe Verb Describe-Verb 2.0 req verb none text/xml 200, 400

Returns a structured response that contains a list, where each element of the list provides information on a version of the specified verb that is supported by this service. The following information may be provided at the verb or version level.

  • description, description of the verb or a specific version
  • note, information pertaining to the verb or a specific version

Each element of the list contains the following information:

  • version number of the verb.
  • arguments, a list of the names of the fixed and keyword arguments, if any, accepted by the verb in that version.
  • example template of request to this repository, with fixed argument indicated in brackets
  • returns, optional, contains information about response format.

Note that a service may implement more than one version of a verb.

 Protocol=Dienst;Service=QM;ver=2.0;verb=Describe-Verb;args=SearchBoolean <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Describe-Verb version="2.0"> <Verb name="SearchBoolean"> <description>Handles search requests for collection. </description> <version id="2.0"> <example>http://cs-tr.cs.cornell.edu:80/Dienst/QM/2.0/SearchBoolean</example> <arguments> <keyword> <arg name="title" /> <arg name="author" /> <arg name="abstract" /> <arg name="keywords" /> <arg name="boolean" /> <arg name="file-after" /> </keyword> </arguments> </version> </Verb> </Describe-Verb> List Verbs List-Verbs 2.0 req none none text/xml 200, 400

Returns a structured response containing the name of the verbs defined by this service.

 Protocol=Dienst;Service=QM;ver=2.0;verb=List-Verbs <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <List-Verbs version="2.0"> <verb>SearchBoolean</verb> <verb>List-Verbs</verb> </List-Verbs> Submit a Query SearchBoolean 3.0 mod none
  • 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
        • operator
      • Fields searched
        • title (req)
        • itemno (opt)
        • author (req)
        • pubtype (req, indicates whether monograph or serial))
        • subject (opt)
        • language (req)
        • fullbib (req)
        • abstract (opt)
        • pubdate (req)
        • publisher (req)
      • Operators
        • and (req)
        • or (req)
        • 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: Words or phrases are matched exactly as submitted; the wild card symbol * should be used to indicate truncation.
text/xml 200, 400

Specifies a search request over the entire collection. Keyword Arguments are a set of bibliographic fields and values specifying the search criteria. Returns a structured response that contains optional search statistics and a list of documents that matches the search criteria.

Each element of the document list has the following contents:

  • The handle of the document.
  • The ranking score 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. Multiple authors are delimited by a colon (:) character. 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.

The statistics section contains information about which partitions of the collection returned hits along with information about errors that occurred while processing the search request. Collections are currently segmented by institutional publishing authorities. Authorities returning hits are grouped into buckets according to the number of hits returned.

The statistics error section is organized according to the error received from the remote server since most servers generate similar error messages. Authorites with the same error are included under the same error element.

 Protocol=Dienst;Service=QM;ver=2.0;verb=SearchBoolean;field1=author;value1=davis;op1=or;field2=author;value2=fox Protocol=Dienst;Service=QM;ver=2.0;verb=SearchBoolean;field1=author;value1=donald;op1=and;field2=title;value2=robot Protocol=Dienst;Service=QM;ver=2.0;verb=SearchBoolean;field1=author;value1=donald;op1=or;field2=title;value2=computer+vision;op2=and;field3=authority;value3=xxx Note the use of the special character "+" to indicate spaces between word tokens in the arguments. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <SearchBoolean version="2.0"> <statistics grouping="hits" segmentation="authority" count="2"> <hits count="2" authorities="1"> <authority name="handlecorp"> </hits> <errors count="1"> <error text="Can't connect to errorcorp:9999" authorities="1"> <authority name="errorcorp" /> </error> </errors> </statistics> <records> <record> <handle>handlecorp/1112</handle> <rank>2857</rank> <author>Doe, J.</author> <author>Public, J. Q.</author> <title>Answering Queries</title> <date>19941106</date> </record> <record> <handle>handlecorp/1110</handle> <rank>2859</rank> <author>Mouse, M.</author> <author>Disney, W.</author> <title>Success with Cartoons</title> <date>19941106</date> </record> </records> </SearchBoolean>