[Koha-devel] branch tables in koha database

[finlay at katipo.co.nz]

Hi Paul, Steve,

Yeah you have understood correctly, and sorry Steve I did get the names of
those fields on the items table wrong.

To explain again: I suggest we replace the BRANCHES, BRANCHCATEGORIES and
BRANCHRELATIONS tables with just two tables:

> * creating a BRANCH table that lists the possibles locations for an
> item. The branch field should change often.
> * creating a COLLECTION table that lists the possibles collections for
> an item. The collection should not change (or very rarely).

Each will have a primary key that is stored on the items table in place of
the HOMEBRANCH and HOLDINGBRANCH fields.

The existing structure is a little cluncky and was about to get more
complicated when I was attempting to resolve a problem for the Horowhenua
Library.

They have books that are in a Circulating collection that go around the
various (physical) branches. They also have Permanant collections which
are supposed always to be held at a particular branch. When one of these
Permanent collection items is physically returned to a different branch
they want a flag to appear on the computer telling them that it should be
returned to its Home branch. However they dont want the flag to appear
when the item is already at the correct branch (obviously). Thinking about
how to solve this problem made me realise that Item Collections and
Physical Branches are really very different concepts and that much of the
complication I was having was due to the fact that we are using one table:
BRANCHES, for both.

Steve, does that help clarify? Let me know what you think.

Finlay



> finlay at katipo.co.nz a écrit:
>
>>I propose:
>>
>>To replace the existing branch tables (branches, branchcategories,
>> branchrelations) with two tables: branches and collections.
>>
>>This does entail the rewriting existing code. However because I
>>wrote most of that code I dont think it will be too difficult :-)
>>
>>Although this seems like a drastic measure given the simplicity of the
>> bug in question, I think that it will be better for koha.
>>
>>
>>
> If I understand and re-say what you propose :
> * creating a BRANCH table that lists the possibles locations for an
> item. The branch field should change often.
> * creating a COLLECTION table that lists the possibles collections for
> an item. The collection should not change (or very rarely).
>
> If i'm right, i think it's a very good idea.
>