HKUST Library Services

XML and INNOPAC

Innovative created a Document Type Definition for XML views of INNOPAC records. This specifies what information the system will provide when asked for XML format, and using what tags.
- Example: INNOPAC DTD (available online at http://ustlib.ust.hk/iiirecord.dtd).

The WebPAC will provide individual bibliographic (and other) records in XML format when presented with the "xrecord" command.
- INNOPAC Record example: http://ustlib.ust.hk/record=b615259
- XML example: http://ustlib.ust.hk/xrecord=b615259 (MSIE)
This was the critical element needed before we could proceed with our XML projects, as we consider the INNOPAC to be the core element of our 'data warehouse'.

INNOPAC XML records are not correctly formatted, containing a line feed as the first byte of the response. This is invalid, and causes many browsers to give errors when trying to use the xrecord command (example error message)
MSIE v6 overcame this limitation, but the code is still wrong. We worked around this by chopping off the first byte of every record so it could be successfully parsed.
XML output is not available from review lists - the only way to get XML records out of the INNOPAC is by using the xrecord syntax in a URL request.
XML output does not encode CJK data in UTF-8, instead outputting characters in INNOPAC's brace code.
- example of xrecord output with Chinese in brace codes]
- This required us to write a separate program to convert the brace codes to UTF-8.