Brief overview of how Voyager constructs responses to an external Z39.50 query

Question

Brief overview of how Voyager constructs responses to an external Z39.50 query.

Answer

A good tool for determining this information is yaz-client (see Additional Information below for link and example response).  Yaz-client is free and open source.

The following is a simple example of a yaz-client response to an external Z39.50 query:

Start yaz-client.

Connect to your server (assumes default port of 7090, change as needed):
Z> open your.server.edu:7090/voyager

Find a known record by voyager id (BIB_ID):
Z> find @1=12 BIB_ID
Sent searchRequest.
Received SearchResponse.
Search was a success.
Number of hits: 1
records returned: 0

Don't worry about "records returned", what matters is number of hits.  Since you searched for a known BIB ID, you should have 1 hit.

Switch to "opac" format in yaz-client, to see holdings and item/circulation info:
Z> form opac

Display the record:
Z> show 1

You should see the bib record in readable MARC format, followed by:

1) One or more "Data holdings" records, numbered starting with 0.  This is basic data from the holdings record(s).

2) If you have item records, one or more "volume" records, numbered starting with 0.  This is enum/chron (e.g., volume numbers) from each item.

3) If you have item records, one or more "circulation" records, numbered starting with 0.  This shows item availability, according to your circulation rules.  availableNow: 1 means the item technically is available (not charged out).  Value of 0 means not available (probably charged out, could be other reasons).

Note: If you don't have item records you won't see volume or circulation data. 

Additional Information

Yaz-client is available here: http://www.indexdata.com/yaz

Yaz-client documentation is available here: https://software.indexdata.com/yaz/doc/yaz-client.html

Example of external query response: z3950_external_query_response_example.txt

• Article last edited: 21-Nov-2020