Conference Talk

Store Bibliographic Data in SQL Tables

Speakers

Mark Hofstetter - HKS3 (www.koha-support.eu)

Abstract

This plugin aims to normalize MARC21 XML metadata from the biblio_metadata.metadata and auth_header.marcxml columns into structured MySQL database tables. Currently, MARC21 XML is stored as a single XML blob, making advanced querying, reporting, and integration difficult.

This plugin introduces an automatic normalization step triggered by the after_biblio_action and after_auth_action and after_authority_action hooks whenever metadata is added or modified. It splits MARC XML into normalized relational tables fully supporting repeatable fields, subfields, and indicators.

Let’s discuss if this would be an alternative to storing bibliographic data in an XML Blob.

GitHub: https://github.com/HKS3/koha-normalize-marc2db

Speaker Biography

Mark Hofstetter Studied (Bio-)Chemistry. Developer (Perl, Python, PHP). Deep knowledge about databases (Oracle, mysql, postgres), working and improving Koha for some years now. (adaptions for libraries as well as writing bugfixes, patches and features for Koha)