[Koha] report generation-Till Reconciliation for each branchlibraries

[Joe Atzberger]

Joann --

Chris and Mason are still active developers here in the community and their
code is certainly the basis of fines operation, for example in
C4/Accounts.pm and members/pay.pl.  I don't think Chris, who has already
commented in this thread, would withhold mentioning or contributing better
code if he had written it for any version.

That being said, I think both of them would also agree that the existing
implementation is inadequate.  For example pay.pl dates all the way back to
2000!  Transaction types are hardcoded, so the user cannot create new ones.
Unlike the issues table, the accountlines table is never purged or rotated,
so performance will inevitably degrade if used over time.  The accountlines
data structure lacks capacity to record the operator (who received the
money) and the branch (where the money is).  All that (and more) needs to
change.

You are welcome to file bugs against any version of koha at
http://bugs.koha.org.  But I think we are talking about essentially the same
code.

--Joe Atzberger

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 5:23 PM, Joann Ransom <jransom at library.org.nz>wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> We use the daily reports in our existing 2.9 install - over 3 branches
> and while it has a few tiny quirks we know what they are and we work
> around and I believe the daily til reconciliation is accurate. Chris or
> Mason can probably extract the code and make it available as a starting
> point - and I am happy to pass on the bug descriptions.
>
> cheers Jo.
>
> Chris Cormack wrote:
> > 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
> > _______________________________________________
> > Koha mailing list
> > Koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> > http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
> >
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