[OAI-implementers] OAI -- some issues

[K.M. KU]

Dear all,


Since OAI defines protocol for metadata harvesting, service
provider needs to  build their own search interface for searching the
harvested
metadata (e.g.  Arc). I am interested in looking for

 - data harvesting (the scheme of harvesting data  periodically, or by some
 other ways ). The data harvesting mechanism is working in a  passive mode
 (right?) It seems that if the number of data providers goes  big, the
bandwidth
 and time for updating metadata may be an issue to consider, correct?

 - a globalized metadata repository model for service  provider. If the
number
 of service providers goes big, that means every service  provider keeps a
copy
 of all metadata of data provider and is not quite storage 'efficent'.
 Moreover, the process of data harvesting may overload data provider.

- if a record has been deleted permanently from the repository,data provider
needs to keep a 'copy' of deleted data so it can return an attribute --
'delete' (right?). How can a data provider knows if ALL service providers
updated the metadata?

 Please feel free to correct me, as I am new on OAI.

regards,
KM Ku