[Koha-devel] What is biblioitemnumber for?

[Paul Poulain]

<wise-old-man mode ON>

Koha v1.x has no MARC support. In fact, it was the first FRBR compliant 
software ever, long before FRBR exist... (who says Open Source is not 
innovative :D )

More explanation: in Koha v1, you had to enter a minimal biblio 
description (title, author(s), subject(s)) THEN one or more expression 
of the work (one large print, one readed book, one pocket, ...), THEN 
the different items. Very efficient and handy.

When I wrote the MARC code, I had to break this 3 level management (MARC 
has only 2 levels, biblio and items).

In Koha 2.0, you had the option to stay "basic" of "marc" cataloguing. 
It has been removed in Koha ??? (2.2 or 3.0 ?), only MARC cataloguing 
remained.

At this time biblioitems table became useless/should have been merged, 
but no one coded/hacked it. But yes, it can be removed (unless we want 
to keep it for future advanced support of FRBR :D )

<wise-old-man mode OFF>


Le 17/11/2018 à 20:40, Barton Chittenden a écrit :
> Just out of curiosity, why does biblioitemnumber exist? There should 
> be a one-to-one relationship between biblio records and biblioitem 
> records ... so why not use biblionumber as the primary key for 
> biblioitems?
>
> --Barton

-- 
Paul Poulain, Associé-gérant / co-owner
BibLibre, Services en logiciels libres pour les bibliothèques
BibLibre, Open Source software and services for libraries