SIA-2.0: query params for string values

[Markus Demleitner]

Dear DAL,

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 09:12:33PM +0200, Marco Molinaro wrote:
> 2014-06-26 9:25 GMT+02:00 Markus Demleitner <msdemlei at ari.uni-heidelberg.de>
> > More precisely, I believe we shouldn't say anything about case
> > folding in the protocol.  That's because unfortunately, we're already
> > knee-deep in case-insensitivity hell: IVORNs were defined as being
> > c-i (which of course leads to no end of interoperability woes because
> > few services actually treat them accordingly).  So, if there were a
> > PUBDID parameter (which could be useful in certain datalink
> > scenarios), backend matching would have to be case insensitive.   But
> > that's a (regrettable) property of IVORNs, not the protocol.
> >
> 
> Here I thing I'm missing one point (or more, don't know): what means we
> shouldn't say anything about case sensitivity? To me this reads like using
> case sensitive values, otherwise both client and server will never know how
> to robustly submit or respond to a request.
> Delete the "I think" here above: What am I missing?

What I'm saying is: the protocol should say (if anything):
"Parameters are compared for equality".

The trouble hidden in there is that we've already shot ourselves in
the foot by defining equality for some relevant types in, as far as I
am concerned, unexpected ways.  IVORNs, for instance, are
case-insensitive, so when you compare them for equality, you need to
do some case-folding, whether you're talking SIAv2 or OAI-PMH: It's a
property of the type, not of the protocol.

Cheers,

          Markus

PS:

> Off-topic
> 
> >
> > [1] Note that case folding outside of plain ASCII is tricky business,
> > including interesting locale dependencies (lower('I'), for instance,
> > is different in Turkish from lower('I') everywhere else, and
> > upper('ß') has caused snappy press reports over here.
> >
> 
> I thought "sharfes s" had been removed from written German (wikipedia
> disagrees with me however), has it only become optional?

Neither.  Switzerland has indeed done away with ß (I'm not even sure
they ever had it), which doesn't keep lots of German philologists
from claiming confusion will reign when it goes away elsewhere.  So,
when last German orthography was reformed in the 90ies, it was
decreed that ß are still mandatory in many places (and forbidden in
all others), even though the rules have been *somewhat* rationalised.
Of course, the whole matter is still insane.  Making ligatures part
of orthography...