Re: [Koha-devel] various questions (mainly around zebra config & stuff)

[Joshua Ferraro]

Hi Paul,

Here are some answers, I'm sure you'll like :-)

On 1/4/08, Paul POULAIN <address@hidden> wrote:
> ~#perl -e 'print "Hello world\n";
>
> Investigating liblime recent or less recent commits I have some questions :
> ==== 1 ====
> - the koha-conf.xml now contains
> <listen id="biblioserver" >unix:__ZEBRA_RUN_DIR__/bibliosocket</listen>
> so, no more address@hidden:port
>
> iirc, unix sockets are much more faster than tcp.
> but :
> - does that means we "loose" the z3950 public server in the process ?
> - Is it replaced by the SRU/SRW that is just after ? (ie : can we query
> the SRU/SRW server with PQF queries ?)
The default is to run on sockets, and not on a public TCP port. All
that's necessary
to adjust this is a modification of two lines in your koha-conf.xml.
Perhaps instead
we should make a new install option for whether to run on a port or on a socket,
you cannot run on both with Zebra as of 2.0.22, although Index Data as
said this could
be an enhancement if someone wanted to sponsor it, and LibLime may be
in a position
to do that later this year.

> ==== 2 ====
> How to check that the SRU/SRW works fine ? I tried a yaz-client
> @:9998/Biblios and get :
> Connecting...error = System (lower-layer) error: Connection refused
SRU/W is accessible via HTTP, and I've added some brief instructions
here, we definitely
need more detailed documentation on all of the options (this is a big topic!):

http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:z3950sru

> ==== 3 ====
> The opensearch & unapi things uses SRU/SRW, but the port is hardcoded to
> 9998, were it can be changed in the install process.
> can we consider that as a bug ?
The port is no longer hardcoded, it's now an option you select via the
installer.
Note that you still have to edit the koha-conf.xml in the alpha
release (which I'm
about to package up as I write this), but I hope to have it a config
option by the Beta.

> ==== 4 ====
> misc/zebraqueue_start.pl & misc/update_items.pl
> afaik :
> - zebraqueue_start was written to update the zebra DB when a biblio is
> updated/added/deleted
> - update_items was written to update on a daily basis all items that
> have been updated (to update issuing status of the item)
>
> now that zebra is quick, a line is added into zebraqueue and the
> "position status" of each item is updated everytime zebraqueue_start is run.
> so do we still need misc/update_items.pl ?
We don't, and I've removed it. Also note, we have a zebraqueue_daemon.pl,
and a zebraqueue cronjob, it's up to the library which they want to use. The
documentation in the INSTALL.debian gives instructions for how to set up
the daemon, add to startup profile, etc.

> ==== 5 ====
> It seems that issuing a book results in 2 lines in zebraque. Isn't this
> a bug ?
Yes, this is a minor bug, I've filed it on bugzilla as bug 1745.

> ==== 6 ====
> Now that zebra indexes quickly, do we still need zebraqueue_start ?
> couldn't we update in real time ?
> (that wouldn't solve the multiple access problem joshua faced 2 years
> ago, when updating the DB from 2 processes resulted in a DB crash. But
> myabe this issue is solved as well now.)
First, we have both zebraqueue_start and bin/zebraqueue_daemon.pl.

Zebra's updating has improved drastically, and we should consider the
possibility of direct updates. But testing is in order here, we need to create
a test suite for simulating a team of a few hundred catalogers, circ staff,
etc. to put zebra through a workout :-)


> ==== 7 ====
> couldn't we transform zebraqueue_start to a daemon, and not let is as
> cronjob ? having to wait for 1mn in the worst case seems very long to
> most librarians (when they add an authority and have to wait for 1mn to
> be able to find it in the biblio)
> would that daemon-ization be a problem for MS-windows servers ?
Yes, in fact, we already have a daemon. Please see the INSTALL.debian
file, and the daemon itself, bin/zebraqueue_daemon.pl.

Cheers,

-- 
Joshua Ferraro                       SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology       migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime                                Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
address@hidden |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS