Z39.50 Implementor Agreement

Requesting XML Records

Revised 2009

August 2009

This is an implementor argreement pertaining to the retrieval of XML records. This replaces August 2003 Implementors Agreement: Requesting XML Records.


Two cases are distinguished:

  1. The client specifies the XML schema as part of the request.

    In this case:
  2. The XML schema for the records to be supplied is agreed upon between client and server outside of the protocol or infered by the client upon receipt of each record (for example when the schema is identified within the XML record).

    In this case:

This agreement does not address the use of the Comp-spec parameter, for either case. When Comp-spec is used, this agreement does not apply.

Schema Identifier

This section elaborates on the first case, when the schema is specified in the request.

The schema identifier may (but need not) be a URI. It may be one listed in the table of schemas used by SRU .

For example:

The schema identifier may be an OID. It may be an OID listed in the table of schemas for use by Z39.50

For example:

Note that there are schemas with multiple legitimate identifiers. For example ISO 20775 Schema for holdings has both "info:srw/schema/5/iso20775-v1.0" and "1.2.840.10003.13.11". In this case it is preferred that the first of these two be used, the URI form. However this agreement is not intended to preclude the use of the OID form for implementations where this practice is already established. In the future, however, no further OIDs will be assigned as schema identifiers. This agreement is also not intended to preclude the use of any other legitimate identifiers for a schema.