[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Evergreen API

[Mike Rylander]

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 6:01 AM, Vyacheslav Tykhonov <vty at iisg.nl> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> In my opinion it will be nice to have API that looking like SOLR API that is good enough for building new applications as statistics reports, aggregation/export/import data, etc.
> At the moment API published on commidore64.esilibrary.com contains completely the same information as in Perl source code, so it must be extended with some details, use cases and examples to make it as clear as possible.
>
> I've found that now it's really hard to extract very specific information from marc21 records stored in database, for example, to count all the records containing nas or nam in the <leader> field or from other hard coded tags and subfields (that is important to make new reports).
> From the best practice point of view Evergreen API must have something like http://wiki.apache.org/solr/FunctionQuery to make it easy for new applications developing.

Better documentation would indeed be ideal, but (to use your example)
the functionality to do things like extracting a specific substring
from the leader and then searching on that (in the OPAC or SQL-ish
sense) is available today, purely via configuration (see: MARC Record
Attributes and MARC Search/Facet Fields, along with indexing
normalizers -- not simple for the uninitiated, but absolutely
possible).  Now, whether a catalog search API is the right tool for
the job of statistical reporting when there is an RDBMS behind the
catalog is an entirely different question -- one that I personally
would answer with "no".

But I don't want to take this off into the weeds, and I think Dan's
point about the definition of API is critical to having a productive
discussion about this.  We're probably in violent agreement when we're
talking about each of the various definitions (documentation and
examples; physical APIs available to programs; more language bindings
with reference implementations; etc), and everyone in the community
can contribute in different areas, regardless of their level of
expertise.  For instance, someone that knows what library
administrators need to be able to see easily, but has no programming
background, can create desired use cases for systems librarians or
Evergreen developers to flesh out as documentation or examples.

-- 
Mike Rylander
 | Director of Research and Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com

>
> Best Regards,
> Slava Tykhonov
> mailto:vty at iisg.nl
> Software Developer of International Institute of Social History (IISG)
> Amsterdam, Netherlands
> http://socialhistory.org
>
> On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 10:25 PM, Dan Scott <dan at coffeecode.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 07:18:09PM -0700, Lori Bowen Ayre wrote:
>>> Hi Devs and Community,
>>>
>>> Has there ever been serious consideration given to developing an Evergreen
>>> API? ?And if not, why not?
>>>
>>> I'm just wondering if that might be something that we could make happen as
>>> a community, perhaps with funds we raise through some clever activity or by
>>> selling some groovy merchandise. ?We've been talking about doing something
>>> like that on the Oversight Board although no particular project has been
>>> suggested.
>>>
>>> But, I may suggest developing an Evergreen API unless there's some reason
>>> not do. ?Please advise!
>>
>> Maybe you need to define what you mean by API. If you mean "a set of
>> methods that you can call to return data or produce results", then I
>> think Evergreen has had that since day one. It would be really hard for
>> us to develop Evergreen without an API. A Google search for "Evergreen
>> API" returns this as hit #2 for me: http://evergreen-ils.org/blog/?p=46
>
> And here's a recent-ish system with the above-described docgen.xsl in
> place, showing the acquisitions API:
> http://commidore64.esilibrary.com/opac/extras/docgen.xsl?service=open-ils.acq&all=on&offset=0&limit=25
>
> --
> Mike Rylander
> ?| Director of Research and Development
> ?| Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
> ?| phone:? 1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
> ?| email:? miker at esilibrary.com
> ?| web:? http://www.esilibrary.com