RE: SQL queries of MARC data

["Johan Mijs" <johan dot mijs at vcob dot be>]

You find all information in the Silver User Manual on page Page #
105705.  I have been looking mainly at tables:

IIIDBA.VAR_FIELDS2
IIIDBA.BIBLIO2 
IIIDBA.AUTHORITY2

The cache flush and cache fill mechanism gives away that the 'real'
database is still the Millennium proprietary database.

If you create an ODBC connection with the Oracle Instant client, you can
use advanced third-party tools like Crystal Reports to draw data from
the database.  This comes in handy, given the poor layout and
possibilities of Millennium Reports. 

The Oracle database structure, though, is quite 'unrelational' and
probably only reflects the underlying Millennium database: in the
IIIDBA.VAR_FIELDS2, MARC-records are stored as several Oracle records (a
record for each MARC-tag).  The MARC-tag is stored as a string
(containing all subfields).  It is difficult to get meaningful results
out of the Oracle database; certainly not the results we hoped (and
buyed Oracle) for.

Did anyone get better results or insights?

Greetz,

Johan

Vlaams Centrum voor Openbare Bibliotheken vzw
Johan Mijs ~ Project Manager ICT
Koningsstraat 146 ~ B-1000  Brussel
tel +32 (0)2 220 31 33 ~ fax +32 (0)2 210 89 79 ~ gsm +32 (0)473 81 78
70
e-mail: johan dot mijs at vcob dot be ~ internet: http://www.vcob.be 
 
'Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick
dancing pigs every time' - Ed Felten, Princeton University


-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Brin [mailto:abrin at brynmawr dot edu] 
Sent: donderdag 20 januari 2005 20:28
To: IUG INNOPAC List
Subject: Re: SQL queries of MARC data

While looking for other things, I did see this in the Manual... not sure
if it's too helpful:

http://csdirect.iii.com/manual_silver/rmil_oracle_records_intro.html

If you go back/forward a bit you can see E/R diagrams and some table
descriptions.

adam brin
Tri-Colleges Systems Librarian

Jeff Campbell wrote:
> I'm interested to see the success of other institutions too.  This is 
> one of the things I'd like to accomplish after we finish 
> implementation.  One of the challenges to this will be the data 
> structure III using in the Oracle implementation....there is a lot of 
> BLOB data in them there fields.  One thing you should ask for from III

> is the data structure of your Oracle backend.  Happy querying!
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org 
> [mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org] On Behalf Of Meg Westbury
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 1:38 PM
> To: INNOPAC at innopacusers dot org
> Subject: SQL queries of MARC data
> 
> Hello.  We are a brand new Millennium site.  We are running Millennium

> on an Oracle database and would like write SQL statements that pull 
> data from the MARC records.  It seems like this should be easy to do, 
> but we haven't been able to figure it out and the folks at Innovative,

> for whatever reason, have not been forthcoming with the information.  
> Maybe it's not possible, but I thought I would poll the gurus, as it 
> seems like it should be one of the simplest queries possible.
>  
> Thanks very much in advance,
>  
> Meg Westbury
> King County Library System
> mwestbury at kcls dot org
> 
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