[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] bibkey field issues when importing holdings into staging_items table

[Robert Soulliere]

> If I'm understanding correctly (just looking at the holdings import
> demo bundle), the bibkey is supposed to point to the BRE id for the
> bib record.  If you're just using a sequence there, then you may not
> be linking them to bib records at all, much less the right ones.

That is where I am a bit fuzzy. They do seem to be linking because when
I do a catalogue search with my imported data records are found with the
correct marc record. I was hoping that would be a good sign of the
appropriate linkage. 

Also, the parse_holdings.pl file in the demo uses marc field 035 by
default, but I thought I could edit this if necessary based on other
posts I've read in the list archive. Does this mean that the
biblio.record_entry (BRE) id is generated from the 035 field of marc in
this demo and that if I use a different field from the "bibkey" in
parse_holdings.pl I also need to match that in the earlier steps that
populate the BRE id so that linkages are made?  

Thanks,
Robert      

 

----- Original Message -----
From: Jason Etheridge <jason at esilibrary.com>
Date: Friday, February 13, 2009 9:46 am
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] bibkey field issues when importing
holdings into staging_items table
To: Evergreen Discussion Group <open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org>
Cc: open-ils-dev at list.georgialibraries.org

> > Here was the snag: I could not find a viable option for our biibkey
> > field in staging_items. I tried using marc fields 035, 001, 010 
> among> others but none of these seemed to work. Either some records 
> did not
> > include some of these or the data was left non-unique after 
> stripping> out the non-numeric characters. The "Bibkey" field 
> requires an integer
> > data type.
> 
> I'd be tempted to make one.  Use Perl and MARC::Record and run through
> each record and add a custom tag, say 901, and put an incrementing
> number in subfield a.  Make sure you start the sequence above the
> max(id) of the biblio.record_entry (BRE) table in your database.  When
> you load the bibs, modify the loading process to use that value as the
> BRE id.  After loading the bibs, reset the sequence in the database to
> make sure its "nextval" will start above the new max(id) of BRE.
> 
> Then when you parse out the holdings, you know the exact BRE id used
> and can link them up.
> 
> > Here was my possibly not-so-great workaround: I changed the "bibkey"
> > data type in the staging_items table to serial (auto-increment) and
> > edited parse_holdings.pl so that it did not place data in "bibkey".
> 

> 
> Am I misunderstanding?
> 
> -- 
> Jason Etheridge
> | VP, Community Support and Advocacy
> | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
> | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
> | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
> | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com
> 


This E-mail contains privileged and confidential information intended
only for the individual or entity named in the message.  If the reader
of this message is not the intended recipient, or the agent responsible
to deliver it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that
any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication
is prohibited.  If this communication was received in error, please
notify the sender by reply E-mail immediately, and delete and destroy
the original message.