zSQLgate - Generic Z39.50-to-Relational Database gateway server
zSQLgate
provides an Z39.50 interface to your relational databases.
That is, it provides a generic gateway between the Z39.50 Information
Retrieval protocol and pretty much any relational database you
care to mention.
Please be aware the zSQLgate is not Free Software (although the
licence is fairly permissive). See the Net::Z3950::DBIServer::LICENCE manpage
for details.
The documents in this section are of general interest to anyone using
zSQLgate. Everyone should read the licence; also the introduction,
to understand what zSQLgate is, and what it can and can't do. The
next steps would normally be the installation guide and then the
tutorial.
An Introduction to zSQLgate
is a gentle walk through what zSQLgate is, why it's useful, who
might need it, where it's headed and the terms under which it is
available.
The zSQLgate Installation Guide
provides a certain amount of hand-holding for people trying to install
zSQLgte and its prerequisites. It attempts to address some of the
more common problems that may be encountered.
The zSQLgate Tutorial
explains, with extensive examples, how to
build zSQLgate configurations for both simple and complex
relational databases, conforming to a variety of Z39.50 profiles and
using a selection of RDBMSs.
Those wishing for more technical detail than those documents provide should proceed to the invocation manual and the configuration-file specification; although for most purposes, the tutorial should provide enough information on these subjects.
Invoking the zSQLgate Server
describes in detail the command-line options available for controlling
the behaviour of the zSQLgate server.
The zSQLgate Configuration File Format
is a rigorous and definitive description of the format of the
configuration files which drive zSQLgate, and the semantics implied
by the various configuration elements.
These documents describe the internal programming interfaces to the
various modules that make up the guts of zSQLgate. They are
probably of interest only to developers wishing to work on zSQLgate
internals. (I wrote them primarily for my own benefit.)
This is the top-level module of zSQLgate: it calls freely into
those described hereafter. With the possible exception of the
Exception module, its unlikely that any of them will have any life
of their own away from from Net::Z3950::DBIServer.
zSQLgate server. It also provides a few trivial access
functions for elements of the Config structure and its
sub-structures. These are not individually documented, as the code is
utterly trivial. Really. Read it, you'll agree.
the Net::Z3950::DBIServer::ResultSet manpage
represents a result set in the process of being evaluated, caching
some of the records returned from the RDBMS back-end, and discarding
them when it thinks they've outlived their usefulness.
the Net::Z3950::DBIServer::GRS1 manpage
provides a single routine, format(), to build a set of
fieldname=value pairs into a string containing an GRS1 record.
the Net::Z3950::DBIServer::XML manpage
provides a single routine, format(), to build a set of
fieldname=value pairs into a string containing an XML record.
the Net::Z3950::DBIServer::MARC manpage
provides a single routine, format(), to build a set of
fieldname=value pairs into a string containing a MARC record.
the Net::Z3950::DBIServer::Exception manpage
represents a Bib-1 diagnostic to be returned to the client. They are
designed to be thrown as exceptions by the low-level code, then picked
up and transformed into diagnostic structures higher up.
Mike Taylor <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>
First version Saturday 2nd February 2002.
Apart from the documents included in this distribution, which are all described above, you may find useful information from the following sources:
zSQLgate web site is at
http://sql.z3950.org/
The documents referenced from here are all on that site, so you can
find them there if for some reason they were not included in your
zSQLgate distribution. You can also download newer versions, find
out about support contracts and the mailing list, etc.
Net::Z3950
is another Perl module by the same author as this one; but whereas
DBIServer is for building servers, Net::Z3950 is for building
Z39.50 clients. It does not share any code with this module, but
addresses similar issues. You can download it from CPAN or from its
own site,
http://perl.z3950.org/
Net::Z3950::SimpleServer
is Index Data's fine generic Z39.50 server module. The DBIServer
module is built on top of this: it provides code which talks to a
relational database, and waits for SimpleServer to call it. If
you're successfully running zSQLgate then you must already have
SimpleServer installed, but if not you can find it on CPAN or at
http://www.indexdata.com/simpleserver/
Index Data's YAZ (Yet Another Z39.50) toolkit forms the basis of the
SimpleServer module, which is essentially a re-casting of YAZ's
backend server interface from C into Perl. YAZ is an excellent piece
of software, freely available at
http://www.indexdata.com/yaz/
DBI
is the DataBase Independent layer for Perl - the standard way of
accessing pretty much any relational database system you care to
mention, in a uniform way. That's what zSQLgate's callbacks are
using. You can find it on CPAN at
http://www.cpan.org/