Friday's happenings

[Patzilla]

Friday I went to several of the SirsiDynix presentations. Here is what I heard, and some discussions between the talks also

1. API - Good investment : this presentation discussed the use of the API to create apps to safely view and edit data in the database. Using the API would allow editing of data in either the "embedded" oracle, or the full version. What we were also told, was that if we didn't get training for using the API, we would not get documentation for the API, or for the Table structures for Symphony. Also, that you had to get a subscription for the API. This subscription would give us an additional training certificate, access to an API user group and API database, and if subscribed we would also be told of updates to the database structure when changes were made. Cost for training 4 1/2 days - $3500, Annual subscription $5000.
2. Symphony Architecture - This presentation was informative. It mentioned that transaction size was less than 10k per transaction hopefully keeping bandwidth requirements low. As for architecture, the database, application server and webserver can be run on one server if your library is small enough, or broken out to several servers as needed. Only bad piece of news is that Oracle will not run on a 64bit Windows server currently, but it is being worked on.
3. Basic System Administration - Day End will run differently than we are used to doing it. They encourage us to do backups daily, but to do some backups you must down the server. The presenter also said that this is all well documented and to look at those pages.

For these presentations, please look at the powerpoints once they are posted to the Codi site.

The big questions I had came about from the API talk. I wanted to know how important is knowledge of the API and how to program it? To figure this out, there are a few other pieces that need answers.

I wanted to know if the Workflows screen displays or the web client displays are configurable. What answers I received about the workflows screens is conflicting but that they are not really changeable once in place. (unlike mqviews in Horizon) The web client displays will be modifiable, but I do not know how configurable at this moment. (A knowledge of HTML and XSL may be handy).

So, if your workflows screen and your web client screen cannot be modified to your liking, we may be able to (in theory) use the API to create an application that does look like something we currently use. (i.e. a patron registration form that looks like our current forms.)

Talking with Berit Nelson for a few minutes after lunch, it was mentioned that the pricing structure for the API was going to be looked at. I mentioned that being told that we would not have documentation for the Table structure unless we paid for training, and information on structure changes if we didn't subscribe was very bad business.

[Patzilla]

Another thought on the API. As part of the discussion, the speaker mentioned that using the API to edit data was the safest way, because that is how Symphony does all its access. So this would be better than trying to do anything in SQL.
If that is the case, give us the training at a reasonable cost and don't limit further access. Denying this access would only lead us to use other methods to try to modify the data causing headaches for us, the end user, and the support team should something get broken.

[Patzilla]

The manifesto was the basis of Roy Tennant's keynote address to the Codi conference

[Dave Pattern]

I certainly hope they do look at the pricing structure -- having to pay to be able to do the things that we can already do with Horizon ain't good customer relations.

Someone at SirsiDynix would do well to read Roy Tennant's recent "Library Software Manifesto":

http://techessence.info/manifesto/

* I have a right to use what I buy.
* I have a right to the API if I've bought the product.
* I have a right to my data.