[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Comparison to Koha?

[Joshua M. Ferraro]

Hi all,

Just catching up here ... I'll just clarify a few points on the Koha end:

----- Don McMorris <don.mcmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Kevin:
> There are a number of differences between Koha and Evergreen.  In
> general, I think it's fair to say that Koha is more-or-less designed
> for fairly small libraries, while Evergreen was designed for large
> (note: in this case, size more-or-less deals with number(s) of
> libraries in the system, not necessarily collection size).
Yea, that's the biggie. Koha has grown organically from very humble
origins, originating in NZ as an ILS developed for the Horowhenua
Library Trust, a 4-branch library with only about 30-40K records.

Koha's now in use in much larger collections--the North East University
has about 2 million records and growing, and it's been tested with
the entire LOC dataset (about 14 million records) with no
performance problems--but since we've never had any libraries with a 
need for complex organizational relationships, Koha only currently
has support for:

1. One-level main-branch relationships (branches rely on main for rules)
2. Independent branches with unique circulation and cataloging rules

There aren't any plans to expand this functionality that I'm aware of,
but we'll just have to wait and see, the community is full of surprises :-).

> Koha has a 100% web based interface for both staff and public.
> Evergreen has a standalone staff client (although it is technically
> online for the most part).
> 
> In the early stages of Evergreen, the developers' made OpenSRF, a
> background mechanism allowing for seamless expandability in a cluster
> environment.  (I believe) Koha is made to run on a single server,
> thus having limited capacity. 
Actually, not quite right here. We've been running multi-server Koha
installations when OpenSRF was still an idea (I remember some of those early
conversations about OpenSRF in the early planning phase ;-). The underlying
technology is service-based, though there are less service points than in EG.
For instance, LibLime's ASP systems run in a cluster with role-based services
including:

1. slave MySQL databases (read)
2. a master MySQL database (write)
3. Zebra database for biblios (read/write)
4. Zebra database for authorities (read/write)
4. public Z39.50 server(read)
5. Apache for OPAC
6. Apache for Staff Client

Each role in this scenario can be filled by a single server, or by multiple
servers working together to balance load.

However, that said, aside from the ASP system that LibLime operates for our
customers, most libraries using Koha find it runs fine on a single server (or
just some old PC you have lying around that you threw Debian on ;-) ).

Also, it's worth noting that the proof is in the pudding: The fact is, Koha
has never been deployed in a 252-library environment, whereas EG has. So
while Koha may hypothetically have the capability to scale that large, it's
never been done.

> Evergreen is made to run on virtually any
> amount of servers (from a single server to theoretically hundreds) as
> a load-balanced cluster.
> 
> Evergreen was made in the US, whereas Koha was made in (I believe)
> Zimbabwe.  Although compliant with MARC21/UNIMARC/etc., this may
> cause
> some issues in US libraries (For example, I couldn't use Koha because
> of these internationalization issues).
Hmmm. I'm not sure what you mean by 'internationalization issues'.
Koha was originally developed in the English-speaking New Zealand.
Since 2001, we've had a very robust translation framework that allows
translation of any string in the template system into any UTF-8 language,
and translations have been made for several, including Chinese, Hindi,
Turkish, Polish, Spanish, Italian, French, etc.

The interfaces also support multiple languages simultaneously, so in 
bi/tri-lingual areas users can choose which language to view the interface
in.

In terms of internationalization support, AFAIK, EG doesn't currently
have any :-).

> Because of Evergreen's scalability and rigorous compliance to very
> complex standards, there may be more administrative overhead than vs.
> the somewhat simpler Koha.  Koha, as I recall, is mostly scripts and
> MySQL.  Evergreen is pretty complex in that it involves several perl
> dependencies, specialized Apache configuration, Jabber, and various
> other things.  This may make troubleshooting more difficult in
> Evergreen vs. Koha.
I'm not sure which standards you're referring to, but Koha complies to
any number of library standards, at very high levels of compliance, including:

  * MARC21 (Bibliographic and Authority)
  * UNIMARC (Bibliographic and Authority)
  * Z39.50 (client and server, bath compliance on the server)
  * Libary Query Languages: CCL, CQL, SRW/U
  * It can also handle record formats in MARCXML,DC and MODS

As far as other standards, here are a few I can think of:

  * There is an OpenSearch gateway
  * RSS feeds can be generated from any part of the interface (since it's
    written in HTML::Template); there are specialized RSS feeds available
    for several
  * mod_perl
  * SQL (all the data is stored in an SQL database)

Koha has at least as many perl dependencies as EG, doesn't require mod_perl
configuration but can handle it. And I'd argue that the new version of
Koha is probably very nearly as difficult to install as EG, especially
the Zebra installation and configuration. But we're hoping to change that,
ne? :-)

> The age of the products may be of interest too.  Koha has been
> developed and released for years.  Evergreen has been in development
> for a couple years, and V1.0 was just released (US) labor day weekend
> 2006 (if I recall properly).  Evergreen has some features in the
> works
> that haven't been completed yet (such as Acquisitions, Serials,
> etc.).
>  The "map" can be found at the Evergreen wiki,
> http://www.open-ils.org/dokuwiki/.
Koha was first deployed in January of 2000, and includes an Acquisitions
system and Serials control (as well as itemization of serials).

> These are just a few examples.  I would suggest you check out the
> demos.  Koha has a staff and OPAC demo at
> http://www.koha.org/showcase/ (note: this demo is hosted and modified
> by LibLime.  If you were to install it, your features may be
> different).  
The demo runs the stock version of Koha, all of LibLime's modifications
are committed back to the project CVS. Any differences between the demo
and the latest release will appear in the next release (the demo runs
the stable CVS version).

Cheers,

-- 
Joshua Ferraro                       SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology       migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime                                Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
jmf at liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS