These are some of the plans that we have for the software in the near and far future, ordered approximately as we expect to work on them.
Improved support for XML in search and retrieval. Eventually, the goal is for Zebra to pull double duty as a flexible information retrieval engine and high-performance XML repository. The recent addition of XPath searching is one example of the kind of enhancement we're working on.
There is also the experimental ALVIS XSLT
XML input filter, which unleashes the full power of DOM based
XSLT transformations during indexing and record retrieval. Work
on this filter has been sponsored by the ALVIS EU project
http://www.alvis.info/alvis/. We expect this filter to
mature soon, as it is planned to be included in the version 1.4
release of Zebra.
Access to the search engine through SOAP/RPC API to allow the construction of applications without requiring Z39.50 tools. Experimental support of the Search/Retrieve Via URL ( SRU) http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/ REST webservice, and the Search/Retrieve Web Service ( SRW) http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/srw/ SOAP Web Service have recently been added to the YAZ/Zebra combo - including server side Common Query Language (CQL) http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/cql/ parsing and configuration. It remains to find a sponsor for further testing, documentation and packaging of this exiting component.
Finalisation and documentation of Zebra's C programming API, allowing updates, database management and other functions not readily expressed in Z39.50. We will also consider exposing the API through SOAP.
Support for the use of Perl both for access to the Zebra API
and for building extension ``plug-ins'' such as input filters.
The code for this has been contributed to the source tree by
Peter Popovics
<pop@technomat.hu>
,
and is in the process of being integrated and tested.
Improved free-text searching. We're first and foremost octet jockeys and we're actively looking for organisations or people who'd like to contribute experience in relevance ranking and text searching.
Programmers thrive on user feedback. If you are interested in a facility that you don't see mentioned here, or if there's something you think we could do better, please drop us a mail. Better still, implement it and send us the patches.
If you think it's all really neat, you're welcome to drop us a line
saying that, too. You can email us on
<info@indexdata.dk>
or check the contact info at the end of this manual.