[OAI-implementers] Requesting a part of a record possible with OAI-OMH?

[Tim Brody]

Joachim Wackerow wrote:

> The size of DDI files reach often 500-1000 KB. The description of a 
> social survey consists often in several hundred questions/variables 
> and in an extensive general study description.

Today OAI-PMH is successfully transporting millions of (albeit small) 
records, which is GBs of XML data. A possible refinement of your system 
would be to provide oai_dc records for your DDI records, using 
<identifier> to point to the full record. I wouldn't have a problem with 
serving or downloading 1000s of multi-megabyte files from an HTTP 
server, but if they were embedded into a CGI XML response it would be 
very slow and cumbersome.

Putting your DDI XML records onto an XSLT-aware Web server would also 
allow you to construct XSLT's to perform the kind of partial-record 
retrieval you are looking at.

All the best,
Tim Brody