I can't speak for other vendors, but historically for Talis it's been a limitation of the contract with the RDBMS vendor. We ship Sybase as the RDBMS for our ILS and until recently that license was restricted to use of the RDBMS by our own product. We've recently re-negotiated that to allow much more freedom for our customers and to cover what was common practice anyway.

Obviously the RDBMS landscape has changed somewhat and database independance is common place now, but how many ILSs are able to work with MySql? Ours can't (yet).

rob


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries on behalf of Peter Schlumpf
Sent: Fri 19/01/2007 2:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting data from Voyager into XML?
 
Are there such limitations in contractual agreements with ILS vendors?  That is weird.  I agree generally that such a limitation should be intolerable.  But I can understand their point of view though.  The vendor is probably trying to avoid situations where users muck with their systems and call for support when they break things.

This reminds me of the first Macintosh computers.  Those suckers were pretty much welded shut and one could only open the computer with a special tool.

Two different motivations at work though.  I think in the former the situation is likely a vendor trying to protect users from mucking around with an inherently fragile system.  In the latter it's trying to provide a consistent user experience with something well designed.  There is something to be said with presenting solid and safe interfaces to a well designed system that users shouldn't feel the need to drill through.

Peter


-----Original Message-----
>From: Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Jan 19, 2007 7:01 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting data from Voyager into XML?
>
>On Jan 19, 2007, at 6:37 AM, Birkin James Diana wrote:
>
>> Since we can't SQL-query our own ILS data directly... (ok, blood
>> pressure is fine again) this solved a lot of issues.
>
>
>I don't know why we tolerate such limitations in our contractual
>agreements. Maybe we should charge a fee or demand a reduction in
>fees for living with this. It's like this, "No, you are not allowed
>to look under the hood of your car or take apart your radio." Weird.
>
>--
>Earache
 
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