From ecemm@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk Mon Jul 15 14:29:08 2002 Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 13:46:08 +0000 (GMT) From: Libby Miller To: IMesh@jiscmail.ac.uk Subject: IMesh Toolkit Subject Gateway Review Questionnaire [apologies if you receive this twice] Below is the IMesh Toolkit Subject Gateway Review Questionnaire, which will feed into the IMesh toolkit deliverables. The IMesh toolkit project is building on existing subject gateway software to develop a configurable, reusable and extensible toolkit for subject gateway providers. A complementary research strand is considering issues of relevance in the distributed, international subject gateway environment, including metadata sharing and reuse. See http://www.imesh.org/toolkit/ for more information. We would be very grateful if you have the time to do this questionnaire, the result of which will inform the priorities of the IMesh Toolkit project, and which will be written up and circulated to help guide similar projects. The questionnaire is designed to be filled in by someone who works on a service for web resource discovery and preferably knows a substantial amount about the technical side of the service or project. However, we are also interested in the opinions of other people in the subject gateway community, so please fill and return any part of the form that interests you. The questionnaire should take less than 30 minutes to complete. Please return it to libby.miller@bristol.ac.uk by 31st March. ******************************************************************** This questionnaire is aimed primarily at technical people running services for web resource discovery: please indicate which services and projects you have been involved with by name and URL. The questionnaire is designed to be answered with a specific service in mind. What's the service you have in mind? If you don't have a service in mind, please answer the questions you are interested in and which are relevant to you. Questions 1,2,3,4 are about the technical specifications of your hardware and software. This is the most important section of the questionnaire for the IMesh toolkit. Please answer as many questions as you can out of 1, 2, and either 3 or 4 before going on to the rest of the questions. Less technical questions and business issues are dealt with from question 5 onwards. 1. What platform and operating system do you use for your service? ******************************************************************** 2. Do you use an integrated software package for your service? For example, we would count ROADS as an integrated software package _unless_ you have made substantial changes to the code, or added a great deal of code. Please answer Yes (Y) or No (N). Y/N If YES please answer the questions marked '3'; if NO answer the questions marked '4'. Then in both cases go to question 5. ******************************************************************** YES - my project uses an integrated software package 3a: What is the name of the software? 3b: Why did you choose an integrated package rather than developing your own or using several pieces of software? 3c: Why did you choose this particular package? 3c: What are the advantages and disadvantages of this package in your experience? 3d: Is it free? (please answer Yes (Y), No (N), or Don't know (D)) Y/N/D 3e: Is it open source? (please answer Yes (Y), No (N), or Don't know (D)) Y/N/D please go to question 5 ******************************************************************** NO - My project does not use an integrated software package 4a. Describe the names and and functions of the software components you use. Descriptions should be brief at this point, since more detailed answers are requested in question 4f below. Example functions could be: search server: the interface to the store of records, which probably has a protocol such as SQL, Z39.50 search client: the software that interfaces between humans and the search server. This could be a Perl cgi script for example. data store: the database which stores the records, for example a relational database, flat files. 4b. Why did you choose this combination? (e.g. legacy, expertise, recommendation) 4c. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this combination? 4d. Are the components free? (please answer Yes (Y), No (N), or Don't know (D)) Y/N/D 4e. Are the components open source? (please answer Yes, No, or Don't know) Y/N/D Details of the components you use. Please answer if you can. 4f: Search server: (the interface to the store of records, which probably uses a protocol such as SQL, Z39.50) -name -protocol(s) supported -kinds of queries supported (e.g. boolean) -is cross-searching supported? If so, what protocols does it support? Is it a serial or parallel search? 4g: data store: (the database which stores the records, for example a relational database, flat files.) -name -is it relational? -how are connections made to the database? (e.g. ODBC, sockets, tcp) -how is data imported into the database? 4h. search client: (the software that interfaces between humans and the search server. This could be a Perl cgi script for example.) -name -is search via a web browser? -what protocol(s) does it support? 4i. What (if any) are the documented APIs used by your components? 4j. What programming language(s) are the components written in? 4l. other comments? ******************************************************************** Please answer as many as you can of the remaining questions. 5. Modifications: 5a. What kinds of modifications/configurations did you make to the software you use in your project? 5b. What sorts of modifications/configurations can be made to the software? 5c. If you modified it, have you or do you intend to share the modifications? Please answer Yes (Y) or No (N). Y/N 5d. Would you recommend this software to others? why? ******************************************************************** 6. To what extent is free software important to your project? ******************************************************************** 7. To what extent is open source software important to your project? If it is important to you, why is this? ******************************************************************** 8. What technical skills does your project have? (programming languages/level/effort) ******************************************************************** 9. In what format and encoding is the metadata stored in your data store? (for example DC, XML DC, IAFA, GILS). What formats and encodings are used for export and import of data into the store? Why did you use these formats and encodings? ******************************************************************** 10. Features of the software you use. The next set of questions covers the features of the software you use. For each feature we would like to know (1) is the feature already available? (answer Yes (Y), No (N) or Don't know (D)) and (2) is it part of your Wishlist of important features for this sort of software? These questions are under the headings of creation and input of metadata, searching, end user interface, store and maintenance. 10a. Metadata Creation and Input -metadata generator/editor for humans Y/N/D Wishlist -batch input/export/conversion of metadata Y/N/D Wishlist -auto extraction/creation of metadata Y/N/D Wishlist -harvesting Y/N/D Wishlist -thesaurus support Y/N/D Wishlist -spellchecker Y/N/D Wishlist -schema editor Y/N/D Wishlist -tools for creating mappings and cross-walks between schemas Y/N/D Wishlist -classification support tools Y/N/D Wishlist -others 10b. Searching Metadata (Protocols and Functions) -z39.50 Y/N/D Wishlist -Whois++ Y/N/D Wishlist -LDAP Y/N/D Wishlist -RSS1.0 Y/N/D Wishlist -RSS0.9x Y/N/D Wishlist -capacity of software to store and query by field Y/N/D Wishlist -cross searching Y/N/D Wishlist -query routing Y/N/D Wishlist -autoclassification Y/N/D Wishlist -others 10c. end user interface -browsing Y/N/D Wishlist -authentication Y/N/D Wishlist -personalization/profiling Y/N/D Wishlist -e-mailing search results Y/N/D Wishlist -saving searches Y/N/D Wishlist -multi-lingual interface Y/N/D Wishlist -news alerting Y/N/D Wishlist -annotations Y/N/D Wishlist -recommendations Y/N/D Wishlist -news feeds Y/N/D Wishlist -searching by field Y/N/D Wishlist 10d. store -is it a relational database Y/N/D Wishlist -others 10e. Maintenance Utilities -web based interface to maintenance Y/N/D Wishlist -link checker Y/N/D Wishlist -others ******************************************************************** 11. Funding Roughly what percentage of your funding do you expect to get from the following sources in each of the short (S), medium (M) and long (L) term? public S _ M _ L _ subscription S _ M _ L _ advertising S _ M _ L _ sponsership S _ M _ L _ other S _ M _ L _ ******************************************************************** 12. What technologies and standards do you think will be important now and in the future? Please answer Yes (Y), No (N), Don't know (D) for now and the future. CIP NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D Corba NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D DC NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D LDAP NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D OAI NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D RDF NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D RSS NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D SDLIP NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D SOAP NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D Whois++ NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D XHTML NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D XML NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D XML-RPC NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D Z39.50 NOW: Y/N/D Future: Y/N/D other NOW Future ******************************************************************** 13. Are there any technologies or standards you are or will be committed to using because of partnerships or funding? ******************************************************************** 14. What types of resources does your gateway describe? webpages Y/N/D images Y/N/D video Y/N/D complex multi-media objects Y/N/D other ******************************************************************** 15. Do you share records with any other organisations? (e.g. OPACS, other gateways?) Y/N/D If not, would you like to? What stops you? ******************************************************************** 16. Would you like to integrate with other sorts of services? (like OPACS) ******************************************************************** 17. What's the most pressing technical problem for your gateway at the moment? ******************************************************************** 18. What do you expect from IMesh Toolkit (if you've heard of it). What would you like it to deliver? ******************************************************************** 19. Do you have any other comments about this questionnaire or any aspect of the IMesh Toolkit? ******************************************************************** END of the questionnaire. Thanks for your time. Libby Miller