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Federated Search
Federated Search allows end-users to perform parallel queries for educational resources across digital libraries who participate in the SMETE Open Federation.
Note: These specifications are being superceded by the SMETE Search API based on SOAP and WSDL.
There are proposed federated search specifications available.
To search the collections at SMETE.ORG using our federated search server, please follow these guidelines.
- The WSDL URL to the federated search service is http://soap.smete.org/axis/services/urn:SmeteSearch?wsdl
- Submit the search request using either an
HTTP GET or POST method, appropriately URL-encoded where needed. The valid variables are (case-sensitive):
- title: the title of the resource contains the word or phrase submitted.
- subject: the resource is cataloged under a subject heading that matches the subject submitted.
- keywords: keywords contained in the resource.
- contributor: a contributor to the resource, such as author or publisher.
- audience: the audience the resource is intended for.
- annotation: accepts binary values, 1 if the user request a resource that has annotations (such as reviews), 0 otherwise.
- The format of the search response will be an XML document. The XML DTD is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE SearchResult [
<!ELEMENT SearchResult (doc*)>
<!ELEMENT doc (DID, propList)>
<!ELEMENT DID (#PCDATA)>
]>
A complete IEEE LTSC LOM (Learning Object Metadata) element set will be returned for each DID.
- We also support a second reply format that is, in practice, simpler to utilize. By adding the name-value pair
SDLIP=SMETE, the federated search server returns a format more amenable to formatting with the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). The results will simply be:
<record collection="" xmlns="">
Entire IMS record formatted in XML
</record>
Current participants in federated search and their respective URLs are:
www.smete.org at http://www.smete.org/public/find/ under "Find Partner Collection"
MERLOT at http://www.merlot.org
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