Hi Code4Lib.

Is there anybody here working with the Aleph X-Server API (or any similar Ex Libris API)? I've been having great success with it as it pertains to user actions, e.g. creating user accounts, updating their contact info, renewing their loans, ...

However, I'm trying to use the "update-doc" service to edit catalog records and getting absolutely nowhere.

General question:

What can it do / not do? i.e. can it update bibliographic AND holding information?

Specific questions:

When I send a request to update a record, nothing happens to the record and I get an empty response from the server, that is, a response without either a success message or an error message. Specifically, I get this: "<update-doc><session-id>SOME ID</some-id></update-doc>". Is there somewhere on the Aleph server that I can dig for more error info to tell me what went wrong?

I can't "provoke" some of its error conditions. e.g. if I send and invalid "doc_action", it's supposed to tell me that in the response, but I just get that same empty response. Is that related? Does it mean the server is misconfigured somehow? Or that my requests are malformed?


Thanks for any input,
 
Brad Dewar
StFX University

PS sorry, I don't have any job openings just now. (: