[Koha-devel] A Win32 circulation client (beginning stages)

[Patrick Quinn-Graham]

Firstly: let me apologise – I posted this to koha-win32 as well.

 

I’ve only come across Koha in the last few days, and am certainly excited by what I see: it’s about time there was an opensource project like this.

 

My one thing is: I’m not entirely sure I like the idea of doing Circulation type things through a web browser. So, here’s the bit where I risk being unpopular: I’ve started writing a Windows client, for now I’ve only just started, but intend to do at least issueing/returning of materials.

 

It’s written in VisualBasic, so unfortunately probably won’t be easily ported anywhere else, but so far doesn’t use any non-standard controls, so it could be possible. It’s currently sitting at a measly 132kb. (Plus, of course the VB stuff).

 

It access the Koha system by connecting directly to the mySQL database using Microsoft Remote Data Objects and the myODBC connector, and authenticates based on the auth table. (I’m not sure how passwords are protected in there at the moment, as I just made up that part of my application – it md5’s them, and stores them that way).

 

Would any one else find this useful? If I release it, it will be under the GPL – it’s not really based on Koha code, but I think it’s only right.

 

Just a little bio on me: I’m an 18 Software Engineering student at Victoria University (Wellington, New Zealand) – 2003 will be my second year, did all the Library Automation software stuff at my old High School – there we used the MUSAC Library Manager software, so have a reasonable understanding of at least the areas I’m working on here :-).

 

If you want to try a really really early version of it, I'll put one up on my website (just need to recompile).

 

Thanks for your reading time!

Patrick.