On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 09:23:00PM -0600, Bryan Baldus wrote: > I've not used Perl-based Z39.50 searching, but I think LC requires a > 6-second pause between searches, to reduce burden on their servers. > While searching using MarcEdit 4.6 (or pre-5), we were locked out for > the day for not following this new (Oct. 2005?) rule. MarcEdit 5 beta > allows a 6-second pause for servers that might require it, like LC's. > I don't know how the Perl modules handle this pause for batch > searching LC, but it might be why you are experiencing a delay.
Thanks for the tip. I've run into this problem as well. I sleep for a while between requests now, but it's useful to know that it should be at least 6 seconds. Is there somewhere on their site that documents this? I spent a while looking last week but couldn't find it. However, I think the slowdown I was getting is a different problem. I don't know enough about how Z39.50 servers actually work, but I think that requesting each book in turn just had a high overhead of network traffic, and presumably server load and/or queuing of some sort. Pre-fetching batches of 20 made everything much much quicker - even including a sleep inbetween each successive fetch. Thanks, Tony
