$Id: README,v 1.4 2005/12/22 14:13:01 mike Exp $
The Net::Z3950::ZOOM, ZOOM and Net::Z3950 modules
=================================================
This distribution contains three Perl modules for the price of one.
They all provide facilities for building information retrieval clients
using the standard Z39.50 and SRW/U protocols, but do so using
different APIs.
- If you are new to this distribution, then you should use the ZOOM
API, and ignore the others. It is the cleanest, most elegant and
intuitive, and most closely follows the letter as well as the spirit
of the Abstract ZOOM API as specified at http://zoom.z3950.org/api/
- If you have used the old Net::Z3950 module and have to maintain an
application that calls that API, then you will want to use the
Net::Z3950 classes provided in this distribution, which provide an
API compatible with the old module's implemented on top of the new
ZOOM code.
- You should definitely not use the Net::Z3950::ZOOM API, which is not
object-oriented, and instead provides the thinnest possible layer on
top of the ZOOM-C functions in the YAZ toolkit. This API exists
only in order to have ZOOM API built on top of it.
INSTALLATION
To install this module type the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
DEPENDENCIES
This module requires these other modules and libraries:
- The YAZ toolkit for Z39.50 and SRW/U communication. This is
available as a package on several platform -- for example, Debian
GNU/Linux supports "apt-get install yaz". For others, you will need
to download and build the source-code, which is much more
straightforward that you probably expect. You can get it from
http://indexdata.com/yaz/
NOTE THAT THE ZOOM-Perl MODULE REQUIRES RELEASE 2.0.11 OR BETTER OF
THE YAZ TOOLKIT. THIS MAY NOT YET HAVE BEEN RELEASED.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
Copyright (C) 2005 by Index Data.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.4 or,
at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.