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Voted DISAPPROVE on ISO/DIS 18626, Interlibrary loan transactions

Question:

Do you approve the technical content of the draft?

Description:

This document specifies the transactions between libraries or libraries and other agencies to handle requests for library items and the following exchange of messages.

Comments:

1. Section 5.2.1 of the standard and Appendix F (Informative) both specify the use of HTTP and/or HTTPS as the transport protocols required
There is no need to specify HTTP/HTTPS in implementation profiles since they are defined as required in the main portion of the standard itself.

2. The ASIST standards committee believes it is a mistake to require HTTP/HTTPS as the required transport protocol in either the standard or all implementation profiles.

We don’t believe that any transport protocol should be defined as required in the standard itself and all implementation profiles. We have no objection to the requirement of using HTTP/HTTPS in a specific implementation profile but feel that individual implementation profiles should be free to specify other transport protocols in order to use those that are appropriate for the environments appropriate to the implementations
they are intended to support and to leave open the possibility of using other transport protocols as new technologies are developed

This comment could also apply to the use of XML. However XML has become so ubiquitous that we don’t see the requirement for its use as  being as much of a restriction as long  as the ability to define additional XML schemas is preserved.