.. hi folks. I´ve been away from this list for some time (years?). I installed Koha at Universidad ORT Uruguay in 2004-2005 with Andrés Tarallo (http://biblio.ort.edu.uy = 61000 biblios) and adapted the system to feet our needs (version 2.2 or 2.4). Before Koha we had MicroISIS. I still work at ORT University but I also work at CES, which is the secondary schools headmaster organization at country level.... well, perhaps it's no so big, Uruguay is not a big country, only 3 million people. We have 270 schools with a library on each one, a big library (I don't know the size yet) and I believe there are a few other small libraries around. Much of the catalogs are in MicroISIS and OpenBiblio and we want to migrate to a fully centered web based architecture, our schools are in the process of being digitally interconnected. So of course my first alternative is Koha as this is the platform I know best, but... (there's alway a 'but') the 2.2 version of Koha had a lot of good code and a few very, very bad pieces, not that I'm a good programmer. I feel this new project will also need some level of code alteration and I'm worried about the actual code status. I haven't got the time to setup a new Koha installation, and I have some questions perhaps some of you can answer, sorry for my laziness but I really don't have the time to read the code: -How is the code today? Does it still have library specific hard-coded pieces? -Are Authorities and Serials working well? -How about acquisitions? -How does Zebra performs with complex queries, say, 5 to 10 terms ( A and B and not C or D... etc.) Some history of my work with Koha. I've modified a lot the Koha version a got from Internet because ORT University wanted some processes to work in a certain way not fully supported by Koha. I contributed to Koha source with a few patches and I also made a fully new search system using MySQL full text search capabilities. I "invented" a query language (reinventing the wheel?) and a translator to SQL. With this search improvements I've managed to reduce the complex searches delays from minutes to seconds, say 15 minutes to 10 or 20 seconds. We hired Jean Pierre Ducassou, he was the one who finished the search system and developed a new record display system based on XML+XSL+XSLT which we still don't have online but will have in a few months. We need to alter some MARC data to unify criteria here at ORT. Of course this code is available for free to everyone who wants it, just ask for it. My regards to the list and Paul Paulain. Ernesto Silva.
Hi Ernesto, On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Ernesto Silva <erniesilva@gmail.com> wrote:
-How is the code today? Does it still have library specific hard-coded pieces?
Most of the bits hardcoded for a specific library are gone, and the last few stragglers will be removed by the time 3.2 is released.
-Are Authorities and Serials working well?
Both are working well enough for production use, although there are a number of improvements to authorities that will be made as part of 3.2.
-How about acquisitions?
Koha 3.0's acquisitions module is also being used in production by a number of libraries. Paul Poulain and BibLibre have just submitted a large number of improvements which will be incorporated into 3.2.
-How does Zebra performs with complex queries, say, 5 to 10 terms ( A and B and not C or D... etc.)
Zebra performs very well indeed and can be expected to handle 10-term queries faster than the 10-20 seconds it sounds like you achieved with your custom search system.
We hired Jean Pierre Ducassou, he was the one who finished the search system and developed a new record display system based on XML+XSL+XSLT
Koha 3.0 supports the use of XSLT for the display of bib records in the OPAC, but I'd be curious to see what Jean Pierre has done.
which we still don't have online but will have in a few months. We need to alter some MARC data to unify criteria here at ORT. Of course this code is available for free to everyone who wants it, just ask for it.
I, for one, am interested in seeing it. If you have a CVS/SVN/git repo of your version, please consider publishing it. While it likely would be difficult to merge your changes directly into the 3.x codebase given the amount of reorganization that has taken place since the days of 2.2, seeing what you've done can inform the future direction of 3.x. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton VP, Research & Development, LibLime galen.charlton@liblime.com p: 1-888-564-2457 x709 skype: gmcharlt
participants (2)
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Ernesto Silva -
Galen Charlton