Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!andy
From: andy@garnet.berkeley.edu (Andy Lieberman)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Remote Database Access Protocol?
Message-ID: <23651@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 26 Apr 89 23:00:46 GMT
References: <7928@fluke.COM>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 34

In article <7928@fluke.COM> foot@tc.fluke.COM (Andrew Proudfoot) writes:
>I've seen passing references to a "Remote Database Access Protocol"
>several times now.  Can anyone tell me what it is or refer me to some
>literature describing it?  Thanks.

This is probably something different than what you're looking for, but
may be of interest anyway:

Z39.50 has been recently dveloped by the National Info. Standards Organization.
It bills itself as a "Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol
Specification for Library Applications".

The abstract reads:

This standard species an OSI application layer service definition and protocol
specification for Information Retrieval.  The protocol allows an application on one
computer to query the database of another computer.  The protocol specifies
the procedures and structures for the intersystem submission of a search
request (including the syntax of the query), request for the transmission
of a database records located by the search, the responses to the requests,
access control, and resourc control.

The standard is available from:
National Bureau of Standards
Administration 101
Library E-106
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899

My understanding is that the standard is now complete, but has not actually
been implemented by anybody yet.  I think (and hope) that in the near
future it will become common for library applications (which are of course only
a subset of all database applications).  There is plenty of room within the
standard for expansions, so will probably be better than following no
standard at all.