[Rets-dev] Google Base Housing vs. RETS

[dbt]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 11:17:06AM -0400, JP Fielding wrote:
> btw, this (to me at least) isnt an i hate rets thread so much as comparing
> some _our_ problems with the ideas of one of the largest collections of phds
> on the planet.
> 
> i think hes saying that gbase has a smaller barrier to entry than rets from
> a client perspective.   as a rets client user, i have to agree.  i currently
> maintain the retsclient java api originally started by cart.

Glad it didn't die. :)

> it works
> great, but keeping it working transparently across each vendors
> interpretation of the RETS spec is sometimes tricky.   not only that, some
> things we have to do cant go into the spec.  for instance, one vendor, has
> search limits, but doesnt provide for paging.   so the mls (their customer
> as well) asked us to implement a custom paging mechanism that basically does
> a binary split based on entry dates until we get under their size limits.
>
> a single client server interaction is not tricky, making use of it
> transparently across each vendor is.

The spec has addressed it -- they've gone outside the spec and they're
not providing what the spec makes available and what their customers want.

> that said, ive played with the gbase api's, the java based api, the direct
> http api, and an htmlunit based client that creates a browser and walks
> their sites.   their site itself will be very interesting _when its done_,
> but there are still a few features missing and outright bugs.   but in
> general, the concept is simple, you submit a _minimal_ dataset.  enough to
> present a search result, then a user clicks it and goes directly to the
> brokers homepage.

Sure, but again, this it's easy to code against a single application.
Don't confuse that with an interoperable standard, which is the best
you're going to get unless there's a centralized provider of this 
kind of data -- and a search API.

That's a business and political problem, not a protocol problem.