Zebra - User's Guide and Reference

Sebastian Hammer

Adam Dickmeiss

Heikki Levanto

Mike Taylor

Zebra is a free, fast, friendly information management system. It can index records in XML/SGML, MARC, e-mail archives and many other formats, and quickly find them using a combination of boolean searching and relevance ranking. Search-and-retrieve applications can be written using APIs in a wide variety of languages, communicating with the Zebra server using industry-standard information-retrieval protocols.

This manual explains how to build and install Zebra, configure it appropriately for your application, add data and set up a running information service. It describes version 1.3.24 of Zebra.


Table of Contents
1. Introduction
Overview
Features
Applications
DADS - the DTV Article Database Service
NLI-Z39.50 - a Natural Language Interface for Libraries
ULS (Union List of Serials)
Various web indexes
Support
Future Directions
2. Installation
UNIX
WIN32
3. Quick Start
4. Example Configurations
Overview
Example 1: XML Indexing And Searching
Example 2: Supporting Interoperable Searches
5. Administrating Zebra
Record Types
The Zebra Configuration File
Locating Records
Indexing with no Record IDs (Simple Indexing)
Indexing with File Record IDs
Indexing with General Record IDs
Register Location
Safe Updating - Using Shadow Registers
Description
How to Use Shadow Register Files
6. Running the Maintenance Interface (zebraidx)
7. The Z39.50 Server
Running the Z39.50 Server (zebrasrv)
Z39.50 Protocol Support and Behavior
Initialization
Search
Present
Scan
Sort
Close
8. The Record Model
Local Representation
Canonical Input Format
Input Filters
Internal Representation
Tagged Elements
Variants
Data Elements
Configuring Your Data Model
The Abstract Syntax
The Configuration Files
The Abstract Syntax (.abs) Files
The Attribute Set (.att) Files
The Tag Set (.tag) Files
The Variant Set (.var) Files
The Element Set (.est) Files
The Schema Mapping (.map) Files
The MARC (ISO2709) Representation (.mar) Files
Field Structure and Character Sets
Exchange Formats
A. License
GNU General Public License
B. About Index Data and the Zebra Server