This page documents the output of https://openlibraryfoundation.atlassian.net/browse/DCB-53

Overall

Our ideal target is a system where member systems push bib and item updates into the hub in a reactive manner.

The current situation however suggests that short-loop polling is the only viable option, particularly for POLARIS and SIERRA. Push based updates could be developed for FOLIO, but present APIs support short-loop polling and can be implemented without introducing dev dependencies.

There is a question as to the relative benefits of harvesting Bibs+Items in a unified operation, vs more granular or separate Bibs + Items harvest operations. These decisions will need to be taken on a per-source basis, but internally DCB should be capable of accepting atomic updates at the level of items or bibs.

Folio

PHASE#1 : Short term

Discussions (TA,II,SD) suggest that the mod-search API is the most likely candidate for short term harvesting of all inventory items.

• OAI suffers from performance issues, and record visibility issues (relating to SRS).

• Mod-search reflects in near-real-time inventory changes, supports Instance and Item collections, and supports metadata.createdData and updatedDate, where an initial inspection suggests updatedDate is always populated, making it a good candidate for a harvesting cursor.

Folio has no granular way to prevent expansion of items when harvesting instances, but instance level date-stamp changes may not cascade up to bib items - it will therefore be necessary to harvest both.

PHASE#2 : Target

It would be ideal if as part of the consortial FOLIO work, the same functions which keep the central FOLIO index in sync could be used to keep the Shared Index in sync - effectively calling the bib and item update endpoints.

Sierra

Sierra offers the /bibs and /items API endpoints. Bibs are capable of having it’s items expanded or not through a granular API parameter, and both endpoints support updatedDate parameters for efficient paging/resumption.

These endpoints with their updatedDate parameter are the selected strategy for Sierra record sync.

Polaris

The Polaris API is less accessible than the Sierra API, but it does offer an explicit sync API for third party discovery systems: https://documentation.iii.com/polaris/PAPI/current/PAPIService/PAPIServiceSynchDiscovery.htm#papiservicesynchdiscovery_454418000_1220818.

The Polaris Synch_GetUpdatedBibs and Synch_GetUpdatedItems are to be analogous to our bib and item feeds in FOLIO and Sierra and are the currently chosen strategy for extracting records from Polaris.