[Koha-zebra] A few Zebra Questions

[Sebastian Hammer]

Joshua Ferraro wrote:

>On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 03:55:10PM -0500, Sebastian Hammer wrote:
>  
>
>>>Is there any foreseeable way to get around the speed issues with 
>>>updating that would make it feasible to store status data quickly?
>>>For instance, Chris wondered if we could delay the actual indexing
>>>process, but get the data in there for when the record is actually
>>>retrieved (then index in batch say every minute or so)?
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>There are lots of ways to work around that I am sure.. different 
>>complexities, different challenges, but I don't think any unsurmountable 
>>problems. I have to be careful not to entirely drop my programmer's hat 
>>in favor of my marketing hat, but really, it is primarily a matter of time.
>>
>>What is the issue here -- the ability to use circulation status as a 
>>filter in bibliographic searching, or what?
>>    
>>
>Ideally yes, but initially, we're thinking we just need to avoid grabbing
>data from more than one place when we want to display it. If status can be
>updated in real-time in Zebra then we can rely on the MARC records entirely
>for display purposes. Otherwise, we need to grab status info from mysql 
>every time we do a search. This would also mean that external Z3950 queries
>on the data wouldn't have up-to-date status information. Unfortunately, 
>having real-time status info for every item is a core part of the way
>that libraries do business, so we can't really batch it.
>
>So I'm not too sure how Zebra handles updates, but for statuses we don't
>really need the index to know about them, we just need the status to
>be in sync with the actual status of the item when the item's record 
>is retrieved for display. So is there a way to update without re-indexing, 
>and is that faster? Does that make sense? :-)
>  
>
Hmm.. interesting. So this would entail updating a record but either 
skipping updates to the index or deferring them.. yes, this would be a 
lot faster than doing a full update.

I'll ask the Zebra hackers how hard this would be to do.

Meanwhile, have you tried updating single records to get some idea of 
the performance issues?

--Sebastian

>Cheers,
>
>  
>

-- 
Sebastian Hammer, Index Data
quinn at indexdata.com   www.indexdata.com
Ph: (603) 209-6853