[Koha-devel] branch tables in koha database

[finlay]

Hey,

I have been thinking about the branch settup in koha, and although it
seems like a rash thing to do, I think a total redesign of the
database branch settings is in order.

At present:

Each item has a "holdingbranch" field and a "currentbranch"
field. Both of these store a branchcode that is the primary key into the
branches table.

However it turns out that this branches table stores data on two
completely different conceptual things:

1) holdingbranch really refers to a collection of items. This is
   sometimes an actual physical location, and sometimes not. The
   holdingbranch setting does not (usually) change.

2) currentbranch refers to the actual current location of an
   item. This setting changes frequently.

In the course of doing some branch transfers work I ended up setting up a
complicated system of labeling the various entries in the branches table
according to what really do: issuing or not, permanant
collection, holding branch or currentbranch, etc.

This has gotten to be a little bit complicated. And in particular now
the HLT have identified a bug

http://bugzilla.katipo.co.nz/show_bug.cgi?id=1390

the solution of which is really not nice in the current setting, even
though it is a perfectly reasonable idea.


I propose:

To replace the existing branch tables (branches, branchcategories,
branchrelations) with two tables: branches and collections.

This does entail the rewriting existing code. However because I
wrote most of that code I dont think it will be too difficult :-)

Although this seems like a drastic measure given the simplicity of the
bug in question, I think that it will be better for koha.



Finlay