Koha Architecture, difference between OPAC results and SQL Reports
Hello All, I have a rather basic question, but something that has been confusing me for a while as a newcomer to using Koha. When I am trying to do some routine data cleaning I regularly find that the OPAC results often differ from the SQL reports results on what I assume to be the same field. One regular offender here is items.location. The items location in the OPAC is different and often more detailed or complete than the value returned in a report, which may often be blank despite there being a value in the OPAC. So my question is, what are the two different ways that values are being pulled for the OPAC results (staff side, mainly) and the SQL Report side, respectively. Or is this an indication that somehow data has not been entered correctly? Additionally, this is PTFS LibLime Academic Koha, I am assuming that it does not differ greatly from vanilla Koha in this respect. As an afterthought, is there a good source of documentation out there that gives a better idea of the internal workings of Koha, the shape of its data architecture and how it renders data across its many views? So far I can only really find end-user UI instructions. Many thanks, Drew ________________________________________ Andrew Gordon, MSI Systems Librarian Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health New York Academy of Medicine 1216 Fifth Avenue New York, NY, 10029 212.822.7324 http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/
On 7 March 2014 4:18:07 am NZDT, Andrew Gordon <agordon@nyam.org> wrote:
Hello All,
I have a rather basic question, but something that has been confusing me for a while as a newcomer to using Koha.
When I am trying to do some routine data cleaning I regularly find that the OPAC results often differ from the SQL reports results on what I assume to be the same field. One regular offender here is items.location. The items location in the OPAC is different and often more detailed or complete than the value returned in a report, which may often be blank despite there being a value in the OPAC.
So my question is, what are the two different ways that values are being pulled for the OPAC results (staff side, mainly) and the SQL Report side, respectively. Or is this an indication that somehow data has not been entered correctly?
Additionally, this is PTFS LibLime Academic Koha, I am assuming that it does not differ greatly from vanilla Koha in this respect.
It differs massively. About 4 years and 20, 000 code commits differently. Anything we tell you here will be wrong for Liblime Academic. For one, in Koha we don't store the item data in MARC, but add it on export, and indexing. We use different search engines, different templates systems and even a different reporting tool. And that's just scratching the surface.
As an afterthought, is there a good source of documentation out there that gives a better idea of the internal workings of Koha, the shape of its data architecture and how it renders data across its many views? So far I can only really find end-user UI instructions.
There is for Koha yes, the wiki at wiki.koha-community.org and the schema.koha-community.org. In Koha you can also have custom XSLT that controls the view. As far as I know, none of this is relevant for the Liblime product. Chris
Many thanks, Drew
________________________________________ Andrew Gordon, MSI Systems Librarian Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health New York Academy of Medicine 1216 Fifth Avenue New York, NY, 10029 212.822.7324 http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/
_______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
I'm not an expert on SQL but, in standard Koha, there is an administrative setting that allows you to edit how the fields that use authorized values display in the OPAC. One of these is location. In our case we use generic 'storage' in the OPAC and the specific details are available in the staff interface. This may or may not be the case in your version of Koha, but it's a simple enough thing to check. On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Andrew Gordon <agordon@nyam.org> wrote:
Hello All,
I have a rather basic question, but something that has been confusing me for a while as a newcomer to using Koha.
When I am trying to do some routine data cleaning I regularly find that the OPAC results often differ from the SQL reports results on what I assume to be the same field. One regular offender here is items.location. The items location in the OPAC is different and often more detailed or complete than the value returned in a report, which may often be blank despite there being a value in the OPAC.
So my question is, what are the two different ways that values are being pulled for the OPAC results (staff side, mainly) and the SQL Report side, respectively. Or is this an indication that somehow data has not been entered correctly?
Additionally, this is PTFS LibLime Academic Koha, I am assuming that it does not differ greatly from vanilla Koha in this respect.
As an afterthought, is there a good source of documentation out there that gives a better idea of the internal workings of Koha, the shape of its data architecture and how it renders data across its many views? So far I can only really find end-user UI instructions.
Many thanks, Drew
________________________________________ Andrew Gordon, MSI Systems Librarian Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health New York Academy of Medicine 1216 Fifth Avenue New York, NY, 10029 212.822.7324 http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/
_______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
-- Elaine Bradtke Data Wrangler VWML English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London NW1 7AY Tel +44 (0) 20 7485 2206 (This number is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London, England. If you wish to phone me personally, send an e-mail first. I work off site) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registered Company No. 297142 Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 305999 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" --Elvis Costello (Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52)
I should have mentioned that what is actually in the record is the authorized value, usually an abbreviation, which can display quite differently in both the staff interface and the OPAC. example: Authorized value = AM Staff interface = Anne Mason Annex OPAC = Storage On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 4:50 PM, Elaine Bradtke <eb@efdss.org> wrote:
I'm not an expert on SQL but, in standard Koha, there is an administrative setting that allows you to edit how the fields that use authorized values display in the OPAC. One of these is location. In our case we use generic 'storage' in the OPAC and the specific details are available in the staff interface. This may or may not be the case in your version of Koha, but it's a simple enough thing to check.
On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Andrew Gordon <agordon@nyam.org> wrote:
Hello All,
I have a rather basic question, but something that has been confusing me for a while as a newcomer to using Koha.
When I am trying to do some routine data cleaning I regularly find that the OPAC results often differ from the SQL reports results on what I assume to be the same field. One regular offender here is items.location. The items location in the OPAC is different and often more detailed or complete than the value returned in a report, which may often be blank despite there being a value in the OPAC.
So my question is, what are the two different ways that values are being pulled for the OPAC results (staff side, mainly) and the SQL Report side, respectively. Or is this an indication that somehow data has not been entered correctly?
Additionally, this is PTFS LibLime Academic Koha, I am assuming that it does not differ greatly from vanilla Koha in this respect.
As an afterthought, is there a good source of documentation out there that gives a better idea of the internal workings of Koha, the shape of its data architecture and how it renders data across its many views? So far I can only really find end-user UI instructions.
Many thanks, Drew
________________________________________ Andrew Gordon, MSI Systems Librarian Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health New York Academy of Medicine 1216 Fifth Avenue New York, NY, 10029 212.822.7324 http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/
_______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
-- Elaine Bradtke Data Wrangler VWML English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London NW1 7AY Tel +44 (0) 20 7485 2206 (This number is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London, England. If you wish to phone me personally, send an e-mail first. I work off site) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registered Company No. 297142 Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 305999 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" --Elvis Costello (Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52)
-- Elaine Bradtke Data Wrangler VWML English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London NW1 7AY Tel +44 (0) 20 7485 2206 (This number is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London, England. If you wish to phone me personally, send an e-mail first. I work off site) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registered Company No. 297142 Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 305999 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" --Elvis Costello (Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52)
participants (3)
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Andrew Gordon -
Chris Cormack -
Elaine Bradtke