[Koha] Koha Architecture, difference between OPAC results and SQL Reports

[Chris Cormack]

On 7 March 2014 4:18:07 am NZDT, Andrew Gordon <agordon at 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/
>
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