Comments on: Talis responds to “Bill-of-Rights” http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/ A library-geek blog Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:16:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: What I Learned Today… » Blog Archive » State of our ILS http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-171617 What I Learned Today… » Blog Archive » State of our ILS Mon, 27 Aug 2007 13:23:40 +0000 http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-171617 [...] John’s Reply [...] […] John’s Reply […]

]]> By: What I Learned Today…»Blog Archive » The ball is back in John's court http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-229 What I Learned Today…»Blog Archive » The ball is back in John's court Tue, 21 Feb 2006 14:18:01 +0000 http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-229 [...] Talis has a reply to John's reply to their reply to the ILS Customer Bill-of-Rights … get that? As Richard from Talis puts it: Anyway, I'm now going to make life even more complex by responding to Joh's response to my response to his Bill-of-rights. I'm not going to comment too much … because I forsee a much more detailed reply/comment coming from John … basically I have to say that I wish our vendor was reading and replying to these comments … the fact that Talis is doing this much is amazing (and should be expected of all ILS vendors) and has given them a big plus in my book … • • • [...] […] Talis has a reply to John's reply to their reply to the ILS Customer Bill-of-Rights … get that? As Richard from Talis puts it: Anyway, I'm now going to make life even more complex by responding to Joh's response to my response to his Bill-of-rights. I'm not going to comment too much … because I forsee a much more detailed reply/comment coming from John … basically I have to say that I wish our vendor was reading and replying to these comments … the fact that Talis is doing this much is amazing (and should be expected of all ILS vendors) and has given them a big plus in my book … • • • […]

]]> By: Thought Leadership http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-216 Thought Leadership Sun, 12 Feb 2006 15:23:25 +0000 http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-216 <strong>Outstanding Questions for Sun, Intel, AMD and othe...</strong> I have been attempting to find the answers to the following questions with little success and figured the blogosphere could point me in the right direction...... Outstanding Questions for Sun, Intel, AMD and othe…

I have been attempting to find the answers to the following questions with little success and figured the blogosphere could point me in the right direction……

]]> By: Jesse http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-84 Jesse Thu, 08 Dec 2005 20:14:22 +0000 http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-84 "I think at least 2 systems, Voyager and Horizon, provide SQL access to the underlying databases." Horizon allows it, but they have a lot of hidden (and puzzling) data associations for which there is no documentation. Running a query for something simple - juvenile mystery books acquired within the last 6 months, for example - is not a problem. It can be more challenging, however, to do meatier queries, or ones that involve patron records (which have a lot of bizarre data associations). The lack of any real documentation on the database structure is very frustrating (and unprofessional). - Jesse “I think at least 2 systems, Voyager and Horizon, provide SQL access to the underlying databases.”

Horizon allows it, but they have a lot of hidden (and puzzling) data associations for which there is no documentation. Running a query for something simple - juvenile mystery books acquired within the last 6 months, for example - is not a problem. It can be more challenging, however, to do meatier queries, or ones that involve patron records (which have a lot of bizarre data associations). The lack of any real documentation on the database structure is very frustrating (and unprofessional).

- Jesse

]]> By: libdev » Can you be trusted with Library 2.0? http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-66 libdev » Can you be trusted with Library 2.0? Thu, 01 Dec 2005 01:20:52 +0000 http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-66 [...] If you haven’t been following along there has been an open discussion lately regarding ILS user rights and where OPACs are headed. In my recent post I wondered whether an open architecture might allow the faster paced changes that are needed in a technology and information-centric world. Since then Talis has responded again regarding John Blyberg’s response. I’m certain he will post with a better response since he has more first hand experience but I thought I’d address a few things. [...] […] If you haven’t been following along there has been an open discussion lately regarding ILS user rights and where OPACs are headed. In my recent post I wondered whether an open architecture might allow the faster paced changes that are needed in a technology and information-centric world. Since then Talis has responded again regarding John Blyberg’s response. I’m certain he will post with a better response since he has more first hand experience but I thought I’d address a few things. […]

]]> By: panlibus http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-59 panlibus Mon, 28 Nov 2005 01:30:57 +0000 http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-59 <strong>ILS customer Bill-of-Rights – round two</strong> Last week I posted a response to John Blyberg’s ‘An ILS Customer Bill-of-Rights’. His posting was partially stimulated by Michael Stephens’ musing over at ALA Techsource ‘Do Libraries Matter: On Library & Librarian 2.0’ which in turn was ca... ILS customer Bill-of-Rights – round two

Last week I posted a response to John Blyberg’s ‘An ILS Customer Bill-of-Rights’. His posting was partially stimulated by Michael Stephens’ musing over at ALA Techsource ‘Do Libraries Matter: On Library & Librarian 2.0’ which in turn was ca…

]]> By: libdev » ILS Architecture: Open vs Turnkey http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-56 libdev » ILS Architecture: Open vs Turnkey Sat, 26 Nov 2005 01:00:55 +0000 http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-56 [...] If you haven’t already read Blyberg’s ILS Bill of Rights I suggest you do so. Also check out the Talis reply and Blyberg’s response. Here’s a brief overview of the points though the commentary on the posts is worth reading: [...] […] If you haven’t already read Blyberg’s ILS Bill of Rights I suggest you do so. Also check out the Talis reply and Blyberg’s response. Here’s a brief overview of the points though the commentary on the posts is worth reading: […]

]]> By: art http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-53 art Fri, 25 Nov 2005 18:12:39 +0000 http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/24/talis-responds-to-bill-of-rights/#comment-53 I think at least 2 systems, Voyager and Horizon, provide SQL access to the underlying databases. In the case of Voyager, this has been an option for almost a decade, so there's plenty of evidence to support the notion that opening up the SQL layer, at least, should be no big deal. Of course, it takes documentation and lots of other pieces to make the access meaningful, but any vendor who uses a modern relational database should be able to allow read-only queries directly against the tables. Web Services are not a panacea, especially when database constructs like pooling are so well-established now, and there are plenty of development environments that can exploit SQL access at a high level. Still, there's also a need for some level of write access, and Web Services could have a big role here. Ross Singer and I have been working on a mirror view of our catalogues using WebDAV, it strikes me that the both the processing overhead and synchronization issues could easily be eliminated by decoupling the need to access the ILS beyond keeping the mirror up to date. I do think we need to be mindful that there are other classes of enterprise software, particularly ERP systems, that have had similar vendor/customer flashpoints, so a lot of this is not unique to the ILS or libraries. You might be hard pressed to tell an ERP developer that the ILS is more complex but a lot depends on whether you associate complexity with IR functions or transaction bound processes. One note on the mirror concept though, we have had some luck indexing the catalogue with things like Google Desktop, so the appliance approach may have traction in ways that really muck around with the notion of where the desktop ends and the web starts. I think at least 2 systems, Voyager and Horizon, provide SQL access to the underlying databases. In the case of Voyager, this has been an option for almost a decade, so there’s plenty of evidence to support the notion that opening up the SQL layer, at least, should be no big deal. Of course, it takes documentation and lots of other pieces to make the access meaningful, but any vendor who uses a modern relational database should be able to allow read-only queries directly against the tables. Web Services are not a panacea, especially when database constructs like pooling are so well-established now, and there are plenty of development environments that can exploit SQL access at a high level. Still, there’s also a need for some level of write access, and Web Services could have a big role here. Ross Singer and I have been working on a mirror view of our catalogues using WebDAV, it strikes me that the both the processing overhead and synchronization issues could easily be eliminated by decoupling the need to access the ILS beyond keeping the mirror up to date. I do think we need to be mindful that there are other classes of enterprise software, particularly ERP systems, that have had similar vendor/customer flashpoints, so a lot of this is not unique to the ILS or libraries. You might be hard pressed to tell an ERP developer that the ILS is more complex but a lot depends on whether you associate complexity with IR functions or transaction bound processes. One note on the mirror concept though, we have had some luck indexing the catalogue with things like Google Desktop, so the appliance approach may have traction in ways that really muck around with the notion of where the desktop ends and the web starts.

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