[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Evergreen API

[Jeff Davis]

On 2012-05-14 08:30AM, Mike Rylander wrote:
> 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".

I'm not taking a position on the larger question of what the API should
look like, but it's worth noting that both of these approaches require
sysadmin-level access to Evergreen.  Not everyone who wants to do
statistical reporting will necessarily have direct database access or
the ability to change how the system is configured.  One reason to have
an API is to permit people to develop applications on top of the system
without requiring that level of access.
-- 
Jeff Davis
Sitka Implementation Team
BC Libraries Cooperative