NAME

Net::Z3950::SimpleServer - Simple Perl API for building Z39.50 servers.

SYNOPSIS

  use Net::Z3950::SimpleServer;

  sub my_search_handler {
	my $args = shift;

	my $set_id = $args->{SETNAME};
	my @database_list = @{ $args->{DATABASES} };
	my $query = $args->{QUERY};

	## Perform the query on the specified set of databases
	## and return the number of hits:

	$args->{HITS} = $hits;
  }

  sub my_fetch_handler {        # Get a record for the user
	my $args = shift;

	my $set_id = $args->{SETNAME};

	my $record = fetch_a_record($args->{OFFSET});

	$args->{RECORD} = $record;
	if (number_of_hits() == $args->{OFFSET}) {	## Last record in set?
		$args->{LAST} = 1;
	} else {
		$args->{LAST} = 0;
	}
  }


  ## Register custom event handlers:

  my $z = new Net::Z3950::SimpleServer(		INIT   =>  \&my_init_handler,
						CLOSE  =>  \&my_close_handler,
						SEARCH =>  \&my_search_handler,
						FETCH  =>  \&my_fetch_handler);
  ## Launch server:

  $z->launch_server("ztest.pl", @ARGV);

DESCRIPTION

The SimpleServer module is a tool for constructing Z39.50 "Information Retrieval" servers in Perl. The module is easy to use, but it does help to have an understanding of the Z39.50 query structure and the construction of structured retrieval records.

Z39.50 is a network protocol for searching remote databases and retrieving the results in the form of structured "records". It is widely used in libraries around the world, as well as in the US Federal Government. In addition, it is generally useful whenever you wish to integrate a number of different database systems around a shared, asbtract data model.

The model of the module is simple: It implements a "generic" Z39.50 server, which invokes callback functions supplied by you to search for content in your database. You can use any tools available in Perl to supply the content, including modules like DBI and WWW::Search.

The server will take care of managing the network connections for you, and it will spawn a new process (or thread, in some environments) whenever a new connection is received.

The programmer can specify subroutines to take care of the following type of events:

- Initialize request
- Search request
- Present request
- Fetching of records
- Scan request (browsing) 
- Closing down connection

Note that only the Search and Fetch handler functions are required. The module can supply default responses to the other on its own.

After the launching of the server, all control is given away from the Perl script to the server. The server calls the registered subroutines to field incoming requests from Z39.50 clients.

A reference to an anonymous hash is passed to each handle. Some of the entries of these hashes are to be considered input and others output parameters.

The Perl programmer specifies the event handles for the server by means of the the SimpleServer object constructor

  my $z = new Net::Z3950::SimpleServer(
			INIT	=>	\&my_init_handler,
			CLOSE	=>	\&my_close_handler,
			SEARCH	=>	\&my_search_handler,
			PRESENT	=>	\&my_present_handler,
			SCAN	=>	\&my_scan_handler,
			FETCH	=>	\&my_fetch_handler);

After the custom event handles are declared, the server is launched by means of the method

$z->launch_server("MyServer.pl", @ARGV);

Notice, the first argument should be the name of your server script (for logging purposes), while the rest of the arguments are documented in the YAZ toolkit manual: The section on application invocation: <http://www.indexdata.dk/yaz/yaz-7.php>

Init handler

The init handler is called whenever a Z39.50 client is attempting to logon to the server. The exchange of parameters between the server and the handler is carried out via an anonymous hash reached by a reference, i.e.

$args = shift;

The argument hash passed to the init handler has the form

  $args = {
				    ## Response parameters:

	     IMP_NAME  =>  "",      ## Z39.50 Implementation name
	     IMP_VER   =>  "",      ## Z39.50 Implementation version
	     ERR_CODE  =>  0,       ## Error code, cnf. Z39.50 manual
	     USER      =>  "xxx"    ## If Z39.50 authentication is used,
	     			    ## this member contains user name
	     PASS      =>  "yyy"    ## Under same conditions, this member
	     			    ## contains the password in clear text
	     HANDLE    =>  undef    ## Handler of Perl data structure
	  };

The HANDLE member can be used to store any scalar value which will then be provided as input to all subsequent calls (ie. for searching, record retrieval, etc.). A common use of the handle is to store a reference to a hash which may then be used to store session-specific parameters. If you have any session-specific information (such as a list of result sets or a handle to a back-end search engine of some sort), it is always best to store them in a private session structure - rather than leaving them in global variables in your script.

The Implementation name and version are only really used by Z39.50 client developers to see what kind of server they're dealing with. Filling these in is optional.

The ERR_CODE should be left at 0 (the default value) if you wish to accept the connection. Any other value is interpreted as a failure and the client will be shown the door.

Search handler

Similarly, the search handler is called with a reference to an anony- mous hash. The structure is the following:

  $args = {
	  			    ## Request parameters:

	     HANDLE    =>  ref,     ## Your session reference.
	     SETNAME   =>  "id",    ## ID of the result set
	     REPL_SET  =>  0,       ## Replace set if already existing?
	     DATABASES =>  ["xxx"], ## Reference to a list of data-
				    ## bases to search
	     QUERY     =>  "query", ## The query expression
	     RPN       =>  $obj,    ## Reference to a Net::Z3950::APDU::Query

				    ## Response parameters:

	     ERR_CODE  =>  0,       ## Error code (0=Succesful search)
	     ERR_STR   =>  "",      ## Error string
	     HITS      =>  0        ## Number of matches
	  };

Note that a search which finds 0 hits is considered successful in Z39.50 terms - you should only set the ERR_CODE to a non-zero value if there was a problem processing the request. The Z39.50 standard provides a comprehensive list of standard diagnostic codes, and you should use these whenever possible.

The QUERY is a tree-structure of terms combined by operators, the terms being qualified by lists of attributes. The query is presented to the search function in the Prefix Query Format (PQF) which is used in many applications based on the YAZ toolkit. The full grammar is described in the YAZ manual.

The following are all examples of valid queries in the PQF.

dylan

"bob dylan"

@or "dylan" "zimmerman"

@set Result-1

@or @and bob dylan @set Result-1

@and @attr 1=1 "bob dylan" @attr 1=4 "slow train coming"

@attrset @attr 4=1 @attr 1=4 "self portrait"

You will need to write a recursive function or something similar to parse incoming query expressions, and this is usually where a lot of the work in writing a database-backend happens. Fortunately, you don't need to support anymore functionality than you want to. For instance, it is perfectly legal to not accept boolean operators, but you SHOULD try to return good error codes if you run into something you can't or won't support.

A more convenient alternative to the QUERY member may be the RPN member, which is a reference to a Net::Z3950::APDU::Query object representing the RPN query tree. The structure of that object is supposed to be self-documenting, but here's a brief summary of what you get:

• Net::Z3950::APDU::Query is a hash with two fields:

  attributeSet

  Optional. If present, it is a reference to a Net::Z3950::APDU::OID. This is a string of dot-separated integers representing the OID of the query's top-level attribute set.

  query

  Mandatory: a refererence to the RPN tree itself.

• Each node of the tree is an object of one of the following types:

  Net::Z3950::RPN::And

  Net::Z3950::RPN::Or

  Net::Z3950::RPN::AndNot

  These three classes are all arrays of two elements, each of which is a node of one of the above types.

  Net::Z3950::RPN::Term

  See below for details.

  (I guess I should make a superclass Net::Z3950::RPN::Node and make all of these subclasses of it. Not done that yet, but will do soon.)

• Net::Z3950::RPN::Term is a hash with two fields:

  term

  A string containing the search term itself.

  attributes

  A reference to a Net::Z3950::RPN::Attributes object.

• Net::Z3950::RPN::Attributes is an array of references to Net::Z3950::RPN::Attribute objects. (Note the plural/singular distinction.)

• Net::Z3950::RPN::Attribute is a hash with three elements:

  attributeSet

  Optional. If present, it is dot-separated OID string, as above.

  attributeType

  An integer indicating the type of the attribute - for example, under the BIB-1 attribute set, type 1 indicates a ``use'' attribute, type 2 a ``relation'' attribute, etc.

  attributeValue

  An integer indicating the value of the attribute - for example, under BIB-1, if the attribute type is 1, then value 4 indictates a title search and 7 indictates an ISBN search; but if the attribute type is 2, then value 4 indicates a ``greater than or equal'' search, and 102 indicates a relevance match.

Note that, at the moment, none of these classes have any methods at all: the blessing into classes is largely just a documentation thing so that, for example, if you do

{ use Data::Dumper; print Dumper($args->{RPN}) }

you get something fairly human-readable. But of course, the type distinction between the three different kinds of boolean node is important.

By adding your own methods to these classes (building what I call ``augmented classes''), you can easily build code that walks the tree of the incoming RPN. Take a look at samples/render-search.pl for a sample implementation of such an augmented classes technique.

Present handler

The presence of a present handler in a SimpleServer front-end is optional. Each time a client wishes to retrieve records, the present service is called. The present service allows the origin to request a certain number of records retrieved from a given result set. When the present handler is called, the front-end server should prepare a result set for fetching. In practice, this means to get access to the data from the backend database and store the data in a temporary fashion for fast and efficient fetching. The present handler does *not* fetch anything. This task is taken care of by the fetch handler, which will be called the correct number of times by the YAZ library. More about this below. If no present handler is implemented in the front-end, the YAZ toolkit will take care of a minimum of preparations itself. This default present handler is sufficient in many situations, where only a small amount of records are expected to be retrieved. If on the other hand, large result sets are likely to occur, the implementation of a reasonable present handler can gain performance significantly.

The informations exchanged between client and present handle are:

  $args = {
				    ## Client/server request:

	     HANDLE    =>  ref,     ## Reference to datastructure
	     SETNAME   =>  "id",    ## Result set ID
	     START     =>  xxx,     ## Start position
	     COMP      =>  "",	    ## Desired record composition
	     NUMBER    =>  yyy,	    ## Number of requested records


				    ## Respons parameters:

	     HITS      =>  zzz,	    ## Number of returned records
	     ERR_CODE  =>  0,	    ## Error code
	     ERR_STR   =>  ""	    ## Error message
          };

Fetch handler

The fetch handler is asked to retrieve a SINGLE record from a given result set (the front-end server will automatically call the fetch handler as many times as required).

The parameters exchanged between the server and the fetch handler are

  $args = {
				    ## Client/server request:

	     HANDLE    =>  ref	    ## Reference to data structure
	     SETNAME   =>  "id"     ## ID of the requested result set
	     OFFSET    =>  nnn      ## Record offset number
	     REQ_FORM  =>  "n.m.k.l"## Client requested format OID
	     COMP      =>  "xyz"    ## Formatting instructions

				    ## Handler response:

	     RECORD    =>  ""       ## Record string
	     BASENAME  =>  ""       ## Origin of returned record
	     LAST      =>  0        ## Last record in set?
	     ERR_CODE  =>  0        ## Error code
	     ERR_STR   =>  ""       ## Error string
	     SUR_FLAG  =>  0        ## Surrogate diagnostic flag
	     REP_FORM  =>  "n.m.k.l"## Provided format OID
	  };

The REP_FORM value has by default the REQ_FORM value but can be set to something different if the handler desires. The BASENAME value should contain the name of the database from where the returned record originates. The ERR_CODE and ERR_STR works the same way they do in the search handler. If there is an error condition, the SUR_FLAG is used to indicate whether the error condition pertains to the record currently being retrieved, or whether it pertains to the operation as a whole (eg. the client has specified a result set which does not exist.)

If you need to return USMARC records, you might want to have a look at the MARC module on CPAN, if you don't already have a way of generating these.

NOTE: The record offset is 1-indexed - 1 is the offset of the first record in the set.

Scan handler

A full featured Z39.50 server should support scan (or in some literature browse). The client specifies a starting term of the scan, and the server should return an ordered list of specified length consisting of terms actually occurring in the data base. Each of these terms should be close to or equal to the term originally specified. The quality of scan compared to simple search is a guarantee of hits. It is simply like browsing through an index of a book, you always find something! The parameters exchanged are

  $args = {
						## Client request

		HANDLE		=> $ref		## Reference to data structure
		TERM		=> 'start',	## The start term
		NUMBER		=> xx,		## Number of requested terms
		POS		=> yy,		## Position of starting point
						## within returned list
		STEP		=> 0,		## Step size

						## Server response

		ERR_CODE	=> 0,		## Error code
		ERR_STR		=> '',		## Diagnostic message
		NUMBER		=> zz,		## Number of returned terms
		STATUS		=> $status,	## ScanSuccess/ScanFailure
		ENTRIES		=> $entries	## Referenced list of terms
	};

where the term list is returned by reference in the scalar $entries, which should point at a data structure of this kind,

  my $entries = [
			{	TERM		=> 'energy',
				OCCURRENCE	=> 5		},

			{	TERM		=> 'energy density',
				OCCURRENCE	=> 6,		},

			{	TERM		=> 'energy flow',
				OCCURRENCE	=> 3		},

				...

				...
	];

The $status flag should be assigned one of two values:

Net::Z3950::SimpleServer::ScanSuccess  On success (default)
Net::Z3950::SimpleServer::ScanPartial  Less terms returned than requested

The STEP member contains the requested number of entries in the term-list between two adjacent entries in the response.

Close handler

The argument hash recieved by the close handler has one element only:

  $args = {
				    ## Server provides:
	     HANDLE    =>  ref      ## Reference to data structure
	  };

What ever data structure the HANDLE value points at goes out of scope after this call. If you need to close down a connection to your server or something similar, this is the place to do it.

AUTHORS

Anders Sønderberg (sondberg@indexdata.dk) and Sebastian Hammer (quinn@indexdata.dk). Substantial contributions made by Mike Taylor (mike@miketaylor.org.uk).

SEE ALSO

Any Perl module which is useful for accessing the database of your choice.

cpanm Net::Z3950::SimpleServer

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Net::Z3950::SimpleServer