Index Data > Software  > ⁠ZAP! (NO LONGER SUPPORTED)

NOTE: Time and technologies change. While a template-oriented solution to building simple search interfaces seemed like a good idea at the time, we believe that there are much better ways to achieve the same thing today. For that reason, we have decided to deprecate the ZAP package. We will no longer be offering commercial support for it, and we are not committing to providing regular updates. If someone else is interested in maintaining it, contact us and we can talk about it, but again, we believe that there are much better ways of doing the same thing today.

ALTERNATIVES TO ZAP: If you are building a simple interface to one database, or even searching many databases in parallel, consider one of the ZOOM-based APIs ... we make them available for Perl, PHP, C and C++, but other people have created wrappers for our implementation (or rolled their own) in many other languages. The ZOOM API is simple and friendly to use. If you're thinking about building something more sophisticated, consider using our pazpar2 engine, which implements much more sophisticated metasearch functionality, including merging, ranking/sorting, and faceted results.

ZAP! is an Apache module which allows you to build simple Web interfaces to Z39.50 servers, requiring only a minimum of knowledge about the Z39.50 standard. ZAP! hides most of the complexity of session management, parallel searching, etc.

The integration of the system into the popular Apache server offers several advantages to the operators and users of the software, including simplified maintenance of the Module, and improved performance. However, it is also possible to run the software as a CGI-script if required.

The software has originally been developed in collaboration between Index Data and the US Geological Survey. Subsequent development has taken place in collaboration between Index Data and the Danish Library Centre, who are also developing a version of ZAP! specifically geared towards more advanced library-oriented applications (you're welcome to contact us if you are interested).

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