OFF TOPIC: Re: Regarding Strategy

[Edward C. Zimmermann]

> 
> Greetings...
> 
> I've just subscribed and I've found the ongoing thread interesting as it
> pointed to GILS which I spent much of last night perusing thanks to the time
> Zimmerman has put forth herein. Oddly, for such a widely adopted family of
> techniques the articles seem to have died out sometime in late 1997. Does
GILS is far from dead.. Beyond the legal requirements of Fed GILS, FIPS 192-1
(in a few contexts including the E-FOIA, Public Law 104-231, House Bill 3802)
more and more State Governments have passed GILS bills and efforts within
the US National Spatial Infrastructure (NSDA), Federal Geographic Data Committe
(FGDC), in particular the Geospatial Data Clearinghouse have been gathering
international momentum. GILS has taken on International scope not just in the
context of the G7 Global Information Locator Service but there are some interesting
discussions in many countries including the EU... 

> this portend doom for GILS with respect to generalized acceptance in the
> commercialized private sector?
Firstly one need talk about Z39.50 since GILS is based upon that S/R protocol.
The "mainstream"? Well among mainstream librarians its been a slow start but
these days Z39.50 is accepted as a "must". Museums have too joined the fold (see
the MCN, which btw. uses SGML). While a more widespread adoption of Z39.50 been
slow going (there are institutional reasons for this) its defintely far from in
either decline or lack of a commercialized private sector. There are other
initiatives in the pipeline (including from Redmond) to bring things more and more
into the mainstream...

If one is talking of the concept of resource discovery and metadata there is
defintely a mainstream trend...

> 
> My calls to prospective customers to design and host their web sites almost
> always includes the prospect asking "what can the internet do for my
> business locally". That being right before they say "no" and then hang up on
> me ;-)
In our ISP business unit we have never gotten that question :-)

> 
> I'd like to take a shot at creating a regional site that will provide a
> search & classification interface and would like some advice regarding the
> wisdom of creating such a 'yellow pages' type of site when everybody seems
> glued to what I perceive to be the fallacy of the 'search engines' and the
> 'domain name', both of which provide nominal value and little else when
> considering the artificially high cost of ownership which in my opinion is
> only getting worse.
Yes. I think the information locator (records to resources) model does make
the most sense--- but again I would :-) 
The first question, afterall, should be "who has what I'm looking for"..... 

> 
> I'd be interested in technique discussions in this regard, specifically
> regarding my study of XML and its application for this type of site that I
The "value" of XML comes from interoperable exchange--- its also quite easy
(still, despite increased wakyness) to develop around.

> am preparing to redesign for the umpteenth time. I've been planning to use
> MS SQLServer and Allaire's Cold Fusion.
Why? If I was to do such a site I'd of course use... :-)
> 
> -- Regards
> Clinton Gallagher
> Chief Public Information Officer, MetroMilwaukee.com
> TEL (414) 774-1562
> FAX (414) 774-1562
> NET cpio at metromilwaukee.com
> URL http://www.metromilwaukee.com
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
______________________
<A HREF="whois://rs.internic.net/ecz">Edward C. Zimmermann</A>
<A HREF="http://www.bsn.com/">Basis Systeme netzwerk/Munich</A>

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