Yaz

What: Yaz
Where: http://www.indexdata.com/yaz
http://lamp.cs.utas.edu.au/net.html (broken link)
ftp://ftp.algonet.se/pub/index/yaz/ir-tcl-1.0.tar.gz (password required)
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/doc/library/z3950/yaz/
Description: A compact toolkit that provides access to the Z39.50/SR protocol, as well as a set of higher-level tools for implementing the server and client roles. Provides interfaces to ASN, ODR and COMSTACK. IrTcl is a Tcl 7.34 interface to yaz.
Updated: 04/2002
Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Index Data)

Z39.50 is a IETF defined protocol for communicating with search engines. Not all engines support this protocol...

Z39.50 is an ANSI/NISO Standard. There are some RFC's for Z39.50 though... (one example ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1729.txt ).

Z39.50 is widely used for library catalogue interfaces. Michael Schlenker

[EE]: What is NISO?

Nicolas Boretos NISO, http://www.niso.org , the National Information Standards Organization, a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), identifies, develops, maintains, and publishes technical standards to manage information in our changing and ever-more digital environment. NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to the full range of information-related needs, including retrieval, re-purposing, storage, metadata, and preservation.

Yaz/Irtcl is(waz) the underlying technology of Europagate, an httpd/z39.50 gateway that, along with Isite/Isearch, "web enabled" most of the worlds Library catalogues.