[Koha-devel] Solr and Z3950 server some news.

[Thomas Dukleth]

When briefly testing the BibLibre test configuration of SimpleServer
Z39.50 server I have found same problem as BibLibre are reporting when
using yaz-client.  I have also noted some other issues.

1.  BAD MARC ERROR.

When setting format to UNIMARC in yaz-client, the following error message
is returned along with the record when displaying a record with the show
command.

"[]Record type: Unimarc

bad MARC. Dumping as it is:"

When setting format to XML in yaz-client, no error message is returned
when displaying a  record with the show command.

"[]Record type: XML"

The issue seems to be consistent for all records in the result set.

YAZ is converting between ISO 2709 and MARCXML on the client side.

yaz-client does not report a "bad MARC" error when displaying UNIMARC
MARCXML records returned from Zebra in ISO 2709 form.

Whatever the MARC error may be, it prevents YAZ from parsing the records
properly in ISO 2709.  Consequently, unlike yaz-client, my very well
tested PHP YAZ based Z39.50 client obtains the result set but cannot even
attempt to display the records because it relies upon YAZ for parsing
them.


2.  INVARIANT RESULT SET.

In the configuration which I tested, any query would return exactly the
same 1011 record result set whether or not there would be any legitimate
matches.


3.  MISSING EXPLAIN RECORD.

Lack of an Explain record should not be fatal but might be helpful for
obtaining more debugging information from YAZ.


4.  DEBUGGING.

I do not have time to try intensive tests myself.

First, fix the issue where the result set is an invariant 1011 records.

I suggest having yaz-client save the ISO 2709 records, then attempt to
validate them with MARC::Lint keeping in mind that most errors would be
from the MARC 21 checks in MARC::Lint.

I have not verified that MARCXML is working with SimpleServer using
Solr/Lucene but I would be happy to test that if some SimpleServer target
would be configured to return only MARCXML.

If all else fails, Index Data can help solve the problems for a very
significant fee.


Thomas Dukleth
Agogme
109 E 9th Street, 3D
New York, NY  10003
USA
http://www.agogme.com
+1 212-674-3783