[Koha-devel] Using a Native XML Database with Koha

[Mike Hafen]

Funny you should mention this now.  I was just thinking about removing MARC
from Koha and dropping in DC.  Switching to all XML is a much better idea.

The reason I was thinking about this is because some people I work with want
to use Koha for Asset Management and Inventory.  I have a few librarians
already doing it along side the library holdings.  My thought was that DC
would handle equipment better than MARC.

So now I'm thinking of just dropping the binary marc column, and instead of
frameworks have record formats for MARC, DC, etc.  I'd also have to use
NoZebra.  I don't know if I could get zebra to index different formats like
that.

Anyway, thanks for the idea.

2009/6/2 Walls, Ian <Ian.Walls at med.nyu.edu>

>  Developers,
>
>
>
>
>
> A recent post in the Koha discussion list about MODS support reminded me of
> something I’d be thinking of for a while.  I’ve heard of talk of developing
> Koha to support other standards that MARC, such as DC, MODS or METS.  It
> certainly would be nice to be able to use whichever schema best fit ones
> collection, and to be able to mix different types of standards together into
> a common interface and management system.  I suppose one of the major
> difficulties would be finding a way to map all those different standards to
> a relational database, without exploding the number of tables and
> complexity.
>
>
>
> So, the thought occurred to me: since most of these formats are already in
> XML (or could be mapped to it easily enough), why not use a Native XML
> Database?  This would save on mappings, since XQuery would be used to
> extract information directly from the XML.  It would also be flexible enough
> to allow for home-grown Schemas to be mixed in with standards.  There would
> also be one less translation in getting the information out of storage and
> into an AJAX interface.
>
>
>
> The one major concern I see (aside from all the re-coding) is speed.  Could
> a Native XML Database, with the proper indexes, perform as quickly as Koha
> does now with MySQL and Zebra? And is there any way to answer that without
> doing the re-coding?
>
>
>
> I just thought I’d throw this out as food for thought, and hopefully some
> discussion. I don’t know if this has been mentioned before (couldn’t find it
> in the email archives), but it could prove to be worth looking at.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
>
>
> Ian Walls
>
> Systems Integration Librarian
>
> NYU Health Sciences Libraries
>
> (212) 263-8687
>
>
>
>
>
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