2009/7/15 Library Guy <library.guy.zero@gmail.com>

What is the reasoning/advantage for assigning both a biblionumber and a biblioitemnumber? In my test database they are always identical. Would there ever be an example where they would differ, and if not, why the duplication?

James _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha

In the past, it was actually a three-level hierarchy; each biblio had multiple biblioitems, which in turn had multiple items. Nowadays, biblio and biblioitems perform much the same function, but the split remains. (There was a proposal to merge the two tables, but I'm not sure what's happening with that.) Note that biblionumber and biblioitemnumber are _usually_ equal, but it's not safe for the code to assume so. There are situations where they get out of sync. -- Jesse Weaver