[Koha-bugs] [Bug 29522] Bib record not correctly updated when merging identical authorities with LinkerModule set to First Match

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.koha-community.org]

https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=29522

Phil Ringnalda <phil at chetcolibrary.org> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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             Status|Needs Signoff               |Failed QA

--- Comment #4 from Phil Ringnalda <phil at chetcolibrary.org> ---
You aren't actually checking whether they are duplicates, only whether the
first is a duplicate-or-subset of the second, ignoring order and ignoring
repeated subfields.  $aCastles$zFrance is not a duplicate of
$aCastles$zFrance$zProvence, and $aFoo$xBar$yQuux is not a duplicate of
$aFoo$yQuux$xBar (and if you are getting subfield in scalar context so asking
for subfield z always gets the first z even if there's more than one, there
might be one more non-duplicate case).

But isAuthorityDuplicated() is the wrong question to ask, because that's not
the problem case. The problem is wouldLinkerPreferMARCfrom.

Consider the all too common case of having authid 1 with 13473 bibs linked,
authid 1000 with 1 bib linked, and authid 1001 with 1 bib linked, where all
three are exact duplicates. Currently, merging 1001 to 1000 with FirstMatch
will correctly result in all 13475 bibs linked to authid 1. Your patch would
instead link two bibs to authid 1000, until either authid 1000 or each of the
bib records was saved again, when they would relink to authid 1.

You also have to consider the problem behind Caroline's "I have found the
linker doesn't seem to work in 6XX fields" comment, which would have been from
the problem that bug 30280 didn't yet have enough followups to work. Now that
it (probably) does, if you have three authorities with 110 $aPotato, answering
whether or not wouldLinkerPreferMARCfrom depends not just on how many duplicate
authorities there are but also on what the value of LinkerConsiderThesaurus is
and what thesaurus each of the duplicates has.

I don't think you can solve this problem without asking the linker itself
whether it would prefer MARCfrom. (Or, by giving authority merges a way to say
"update the index, do it now, and tell me when it's done" which is probably too
much responsiveness to even dream of.)

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