[Koha] report generation-Till Reconciliation for each branchlibraries

[Chris Cormack]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 6:53 AM, Joe Atzberger <ohiocore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:49 AM, BWS Johnson <mhelman at illinoisalumni.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> Salvete!
>> >That report has been discussed before and was purposefully commented out
>> > in 3.0 (I argue should have
>> >been deleted) becuase it is not reliable in a multi-branch situation. At
>> > present, the branch where the
>> >transaction took place is not logged, so you cannot possibly create a
>> > report to extract that information.
>> >
>> >Developers are fairly aware of this problem and are working to totally
>> > overhaul fines data structure.
>>
>> I don't mean to be abrasive here, but will that overhaul include a
>> solution that is palatable to both single branch Libraries and multi branch?
>
> Yes, in particular since the current implementation is neither.  A Koha user
> with a single branch still doesn't want their system to become unreliable
> just because they add a second branch.
>
> But fines in Koha has enough problematic design flaws that it requires
> overhaul even for single branch setups.  The current model is not reliable,
> atomic, maintainable, extensible, documented, secure or auditable.  The
> overhaul offers most if not all those characteristics.
>
>>
>> I'd rather not see things tilt towards larger institutions in terms of
>> deleting functions that used to exist.
>
> I'd rather not provide institutions of any size with functions that are
> erroneous, unreliable or fundamentally unsound.  I am against preserving
> features that happen to work only in small or single branch setups (unless
> they are wrapped in the SingleBranch syspref).  As a different example,
> inefficient queries that "work fine" on 4,000 records and crash systems on
> 100,000 are not the kind of well-designed features worth preserving.
> Leaving those kinds of landmines for users to step on makes Koha (or
> Unicorn, or any product) look amateurish.
>
Wow, how defensive we developers are.

I think its worth acknowledging that Brooke has made some valid
points. That we do need to be careful that we make Koha usable for as
many people as possible. And while Joshua is right we mostly have to
code what the libraries are asking for we should be careful we don't
undo what other libraries have already paid for also.

If something is broke, lets fix it. Lets not just throw features out.

Chris