- it's a "Microsoft-oriented product," based upon the strength of its COM and .NET APIs. I haven't used the TEXTML Java API, but the reviewer writes that it is less robust than the two Windows-based alternatives. I have only begun in-depth work with the TEXTML .NET API recently. Problems with XSLT transformations using .NET's 1.1 System.Xml classes (in comparison to MSXML 4.0) probably inhibited my site's efforts in exploring the TEXTML .NET API more fully. Since there's significant improvement in XSLT performance with .NET 2.0, migrating my site's TEXTML search interface to be native .NET makes a lot of sense. But, getting back to the review point, TEXTML's documentation is largely based upon use of the TEXTML COM components.
- shaky interoperability. The reviewer cites TEXTML's lack of support for "direct native integration with relational databases." TEXTML has built-in support for WebDAV, and a coder at my site developed excellent OAI-PMH data provider support for a TEXTML database. I will say that IXIASOFT has, in the past year or so, begun offering application development as a service; an EAD consortium recently licensed TEXTML and will rely upon vendor development of its search system. This may lead to a natural increase in interest in interoperability at IXIASOFT.
TEXTML has been a great product for my site's project. More than anything, though, I'd like to see a coordinated user group effort among its higher education users. I believe that this would solve both of the issues cited above.
