Z39.50 Temporary system error when including a comma in the search argument

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Article Type: General
Product: Aleph
Product Version: 17 and up

Description:
Searching an external, non-ALEPH Z39.50 target for 'Franklin, Benjamin' results in 'System Message Z39.50 target error: [2] Temporary system error.' This occurs when selecting search by general keyword or search by author keyword.

Resolution:
The target doesn't support queries that include a comma. Trying the same search specifying just 'Franklin Benjamin' works properly.

The search query that is sent to the external target can be normalized in order to strip out punctuation using the <target>.conf file for the target in $alephe_gate. In this case the following lines should be added to the conf file:

Z58-TAB01
Z58-TAB01-TYPE find
Z58-TAB01-CODE WAU
Z58-TAB01-CODE-TARGET WAU
Z58-TAB01-FILING 7P([/<P_2P.,:;!"-P
Z58-TAB01
Z58-TAB01-TYPE find
Z58-TAB01-CODE WTI
Z58-TAB01-CODE-TARGET WTI
Z58-TAB01-FILING 7P([/<P_2P.,:;!"-P_3
Z58-TAB01
Z58-TAB01-TYPE find
Z58-TAB01-CODE WSU
Z58-TAB01-CODE-TARGET WSU
Z58-TAB01-FILING 7P([/<P_2P.,:;!"-P_3
Z58-TAB01
Z58-TAB01-TYPE find
Z58-TAB01-CODE WRD
Z58-TAB01-CODE-TARGET WRD
Z58-TAB01-FILING 7P([/<P_2P.,:;!"-P_3

These lines will remove the following special characters from author keyword, title keyword, subject keyword, and keyword anywhere searches:

period
comma
semicolon
colon
exclamation mark
double quote
hyphen.

Article last edited: 10/8/2013