seamlessUK - Interoperable e-government?
The seamlessUK website claims to allow citizens the chance to "retrieve information from multiple websites and databases in a single search without the need to know, or enter the specific addresses for each one" via Z39.50 (which I've heard of...) and Z'mbol, which I haven't, though it appears to be something that sits on top of Z39.50, so that's okay then...
XML and SOAP is mentioned in the mix, but any really useful details appear (at the moment at least) to be sadly lacking...
Now, Z39.50 isn't really my area (is anything?) and though I thought I'd blogged about it before, it appears I haven't...
So, as far as my limited understanding goes, I though Z39.50 was old and boring, and XML was to be the way forward with SRW. This reasonably recent post on a Web Services Approach for Search and Retrieve seems to introduce some of the issues (there are a few more links on this earlier posting about SRW, where I suggested that the SOAP/REST debate is going on in the library world using different acronyms...)
Anyway - back to seamlessuk and another quote: "[t]he seamlessUK geocoder will search a number of geographic data sources to resolve place name queries, understand what the user has entered and interpret that query for the different information sources." Good, eh?
Now what gets me is that the taxonomy underlying this system (because you have to have a taxonomy, right?, or ontology, or whatever translator glue you want to call it) is licensable... and there doesn;t appear - at the moment at least - to be an open interface to the system. Which is gonna make it hard for people to embed in their own systems, presumably...so they either won't bother, or they'll build their own...or perhaps they won't...we'll see...
XML and SOAP is mentioned in the mix, but any really useful details appear (at the moment at least) to be sadly lacking...
Now, Z39.50 isn't really my area (is anything?) and though I thought I'd blogged about it before, it appears I haven't...
So, as far as my limited understanding goes, I though Z39.50 was old and boring, and XML was to be the way forward with SRW. This reasonably recent post on a Web Services Approach for Search and Retrieve seems to introduce some of the issues (there are a few more links on this earlier posting about SRW, where I suggested that the SOAP/REST debate is going on in the library world using different acronyms...)
Anyway - back to seamlessuk and another quote: "[t]he seamlessUK geocoder will search a number of geographic data sources to resolve place name queries, understand what the user has entered and interpret that query for the different information sources." Good, eh?
Now what gets me is that the taxonomy underlying this system (because you have to have a taxonomy, right?, or ontology, or whatever translator glue you want to call it) is licensable... and there doesn;t appear - at the moment at least - to be an open interface to the system. Which is gonna make it hard for people to embed in their own systems, presumably...so they either won't bother, or they'll build their own...or perhaps they won't...we'll see...
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