Re: [Koha-zebra] Koha & zebra (continuing to try to understand...)

[Mike Taylor]

> Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 15:51:13 +0200
> From: Paul POULAIN <address@hidden>
> 
> I've just spoken a little on irc with joshua & investigate
> zoom.z3950.org & indexdata "embedding the zebra" doc & there are
> still dark points for me :

I'm afraid you're the victim of decaying work ... always a probably
with unfunded work, of course, but I think all the relevant issues are
in hand.

> 1st point :
> ============
> It seems that "embeeding the zebra", page 6, 2.1.2.3 is wrong, as it
> says "The Perl API was submitted by Peter Popovics. It is supported
> & maintained by Index Data. The following is a synopsis of it's
> usage: ..."
> 
> Joshua told me this API was outdated, no more maintained. I tried
> "perl Makefile.PL && make && make test" on idzebra-1.3.28/perl but
> got a nasty : Failed 8/8 test scripts, 0.00% okay. 103/103 subtests
> failed, 0.00% okay.
> [...]
> someone will confirm that it's a non sense to continue investigating
> what is in this directory.

Yes, that Perl API, which is to Zebra's guts, was supplied by a non-ID
person.  It did work, but was hard to maintain, and now that he
himself is no longer involved, it's more work than we want to do for
something that we don't use ourselves.  So it's pretty much decayed.
If you want to get it working, you may well be able to -- I don't know
that precisely is wrong -- but we wouldn't want to get sucked into
providing much help for suich an effort.

(To be clear, this is a completely separate Perl module from
Net::Z3950, which is a general Z-client module that will work against
and Z39.50 server.  That one _is_ maintained and supported.)

> 2nd point :
> ===========
> If I understand correctly (& I think I do), the yaz/zoom API gives
> facilities to search AND manage the zebra database.

Yes.

> Once again, if I understand correctly, this Perl/API is not 100%
> ready & not released yet.

This API is released, stable and supported as C, as ZOOM-C.  The work
to wire that functionality out into Perl, as the ZOOM-Perl module, has
awaited funding -- which Josh has recently secured from two sponsors.
The code should be available within a month of getting the formal
go-ahead, possibly much sooner.

> 3rd point :
> ===========
> (that troubles me a little bit...)
> when I read http://zoom.z3950.org/api/zoom-1.4.html, I don't see 
> anything to add or update or delete records.

Correct.  That document describes the ZOOM Abstract API, which any
ZOOM implementation in any language must adhere to.  However, ZOOM-C
(and the many other-language ZOOM implementations that are based on
it) include extensions that are not in the AAPI.  They might be added
in v1.5 of the AAPI, but again, no-one pays us to maitain these
documents, so they always fall to the back of the queue when paying
customers want us to do something else.

> anyway, now I consider we will soon have a Perl API to manage the
> zebra DB.

Yes.

> My plans to move from Koha 2.2 DB to Koha 3.0 DB (using zebra) has been 
> explained a lot in a previous mail. It seems that the perl/zoom API is 
> what I need & that it could be done quite quickly.

Yes.

> BUT we also need tools to move from 2.2 to 3.0. Hopefully, we have a
> great tool, called updatedatabase, to ... update the database
> (strange isn't it ;-) ?)

You mean, to translate the old MySQL database into an equivalent new
Zebra database?

> My detailled plan would be :
> [snip snip snip]
> At the end of this step, we have a fully functionnal Koha-zebra for
> data management.

Yes.  I don't follow the details because I don't know how Koha's
database is currently laid out, but it sounds like you know what
you're doing!  :-)

> 5- partial search.
> But we have no tools to search at all, that's a pity, I agree ;-)

Why not?  You can use the Net::Z3950 module to search in Zebra.

> My idea, while waiting for Perl/Zoom package to be ready, would be
> to begin the work with some perl system call to run zebra & update
> the database.
> Then, once the Perl package is ready, move to it.
> I imagine this last step very easy, just replacing a file writing
> (the iso2709 record) & a system call (to run idzebra) by a "zebra
> connection open" and "deals the MARC record".
> 
> You, indexdata guys, do you think i'm right there or wrong ? should I go 
> that way ?

Sounds reasonable to me.

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <address@hidden>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrifical chalices
         dry; this occurs repeatedly, again and again: finally it can be
         reckoned upon beforehand and becomes a part of the ceremony" --
         Franz Kafka.