[Koha] null itemnumbers and borrowernumbers in issues table

[Joe Atzberger]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Jeffrey LePage
<jeffrey_lepage at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> Greetings,
>
> We've just discovered 4 records in the issues table that have nulls where
> there should never be nulls.  Specifically, 2 records with null
> borrowernumber and 2 records with null itemnumber.  As a result, there are
> two overdue books checked out to a NULL patron and two patrons who've
> checked out NULL books.
>
> I notice that the issues table is constructed thus:
> mysql> desc issues;
> +-----------------+-------------+------+-----+-------------------+-------+
> | Field           | Type        | Null | Key | Default           | Extra |
> +-----------------+-------------+------+-----+-------------------+-------+
> | borrowernumber  | int(11)     | YES  | MUL | NULL              |       |
> | itemnumber      | int(11)     | YES  | MUL | NULL              |       |
> | date_due        | date        | YES  |     | NULL              |       |
> | branchcode      | varchar(10) | YES  |     | NULL              |       |
> | issuingbranch   | varchar(18) | YES  |     | NULL              |       |
> | returndate      | date        | YES  |     | NULL              |       |
> | lastreneweddate | date        | YES  |     | NULL              |       |
> | return          | varchar(4)  | YES  |     | NULL              |       |
> | renewals        | tinyint(4)  | YES  |     | NULL              |       |
> | timestamp       | timestamp   | NO   |     | CURRENT_TIMESTAMP |       |
> | issuedate       | date        | YES  |     | NULL              |       |
> +-----------------+-------------+------+-----+-------------------+-------+
>
> Notice that borrowernumber and itemnumber are NULL'able.
> Isn't this a _bad_ idea?  I don't know why/how the null itemnumbers and
> borrowernumbers got into the database, but it seems that making them
> non-nullable would be a good idea.
>
> Comments?


This is a known issue, basically a compromise to allow offline circulation
to work in 3.0 (where the borrowernumber or itemnumber might not actually
exist when the insertions are done).  But in short, yes, I agree DB
constraints need to be imposed for itemnumber and borrowernumber in issues.


--
Joe Atzberger
LibLime - Open Source Library Solutions
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.katipo.co.nz/pipermail/koha/attachments/20090410/ead380fb/attachment.htm