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Hi all,

Apologies, have got distracted from mailing lists and missed these replies last week...

The existing app is called Datacard and I know very little about it - installed before my time by another department, etc. But basically it prints our library cards, so it needs the appropriate user data (name, barcode, other ID details). Previously it pulled these from PeopleSoft over ODBC, but with our migration things are different and decisions were made so now for a class of users the data is only available in Alma.

A nightly extract of data to a Koha (or other) install wouldn't work because we're needing the data at the point of sign-up to the library so the card can be printed.

It sounds very much like it comes down to seeing if there's an upgrade to Datacard we can write a business case for and in the meantime continue to type or copy/paste the data by hand at point of need. Not the ideal situation but at least it's a relatively small class of users affected.

Thanks,

Deborah 


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cary Gordon
Sent: Wednesday, 24 September 2014 3:59 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] REST vs ODBC

Could you reveal anything about what the existing application (EA) is and what it does?

We don't know what the EA was connected to, so there can't know if Koha would work as middleware. It might be simpler to write your own middleware in Symfony (I have grown fond of Guzzle), or some other framework and just pull the data into a database that has the same structure as your old system.

Thanks,

Cary

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:01 PM, Fitchett, Deborah < [log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Morning, all,
>
> We have a small dilemma:
>
>
> 1.       Our brand new Alma system provides access to a bunch of data via
> RESTful API. It’s on The Cloud so we’re not going to be getting direct 
> access to the database anytime soon.
>
>
> 2.       We have an existing application that would be more efficient if
> it could get that data, but which only uses ODBC. (I’m told other 
> available drivers are:
> - Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE
> - Microsoft Office
> - Microsoft OLE DB Provider
> - Microsoft Datashape
> - OLE DB Provider
> - SQL Server Native Client 10.0)
>
> Does anyone know if there’s any middleware out there that could make 
> these two things talk to each other, or do we give this up as a “Would 
> have been nice, but <shrug>”?
>
> Nāku noa, nā
>
> Deborah Fitchett
> Senior Advisor, Digital Access
> Library, Teaching and Learning
>
> p +64 3 423 0358
> e 
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> 
> | w library.lincoln.ac.nz<http://library.lincoln.ac.nz/>
>
> Lincoln University, Te Whare Wānaka o Aoraki New Zealand's specialist 
> land-based university
>
>
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--
Cary Gordon
The Cherry Hill Company
http://chillco.com