1. https://xkcd.com/1205/

3. GIVE THEM A FISH OR
TEACHING THEM TO FISH
(OR SOMETHING ELSE?)
THREE MODELS FOR REPORTING FROM
SIERRA’S POSTGRESQL DATABASE

4. •Migrated to Sierra in late 2012
•Metropolitan public library
•Main downtown library and 15 branches
•Serving > 1,000,000 Orange County Residents
•~ 1.5 million items
•~ 0.5 million checkouts a month
•~10% of that are requests delivered
•~350 employees
•Annual budget totals approximately $35.3 million
Orange County Library System

5. https://xkcd.com/1205/

6. •1minute 50 times/day = 8 weeks
((50 x 365 x 5)/60)/24 = 63.367 days
•6 hours/week = 2 months
(6 x 52 x 5)/24 = 65 days
•(56 x 24)/8 = 168 8 hour work days
ARITHMETIC AND STUFF

7. "Don't forget the time you spend finding
the chart to look up what you save. And
the time spent reading this reminder
about the time spent. And the time trying
to figure out if either of those actually
make sense. Remember, every second
counts toward your life total, including
these right now."

8. …or the time you are spending in this
presentation regarding evaluating how
much time you will spend determining
whether or not it is worth automating.

9. •Give them a fish
–Just do it for them
•Bait the hook and drop the line for them
–Build an application (which is basically giving them
the fish)
•Teach them to fish
–Write queries for them
–Teach them how it works
–Let them run with it
THREE WAYS TO DELIVER DATA USING SQL

10. •Just do it for them?
–Write the query
–SAVE THE QUERY
– --COMMENT YOUR CODE!
–Export the data, save it as Excel, and give it to the
(information) needy
GIVE THEM A FISH

11. IS IT WORTH AUTOMATING?
Probably not.

12. •Build an application for them?
–Frequently performed process
–Manual process disrupts high volume workflow
–Takes *significant time (*relatively)
–Needed by
•Numerous people
•non-professional staff
–Introduces significant chance for human error
Maybe you should build it?
BAIT THE HOOK AND DROP THE LINE FOR THEM

13. •Held Items Delivery
•~40,000 items delivered each month
•Circumvent traditional holds in WebPac
•Traditional holds only in Sierra
•Staff had to perform an absurd process
WHO HAS IT?

14. OLD PROCESS

15. WHO HAS IT? SELECT (CASE pe.index_entry WHEN ' '
THEN 'no data' else pe.index_entry
end) as pid
FROM iii.sierra_view.hold hold
LEFT JOIN sierra_view.phrase_entry pe
ON hold.patron_record_id = pe.record_id
LEFT JOIN
sierra_view.item_record_property irp
ON hold.record_id = irp.item_record_id
WHERE pe.index_tag = 'b'
AND irp.barcode = [item barcode];

16. IS IT WORTH AUTOMATING?
…uh, yeah.

17. •Teach them to do it for themselves?
–Needed by
•Numerous people
•Professional staff
–Frequently performed process
–Monotonous and labor intensive
–Introduces significant chance for human error
–More complex data
TEACH THEM TO FISH (but give them the fish first)

18. •Number of users
•Time of day
•Complexity of queries
•You may have to first convince them that they will
really like fishing.
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR FISHING

19. DOCUMENTATION
•Prepared three documents
–Connecting with pgAdmn
–Executing Saved SQL Queries in pgAdmin
–Basic SQL Concepts Pertaining to Sierra
•Most basic parts of a query
•How changing predicates impact query
•Comments
•Operators and functions
•Pattern Matching
•SierraDNA

20. WRITE IT FOR THEM AND SHARE

21. WORKFLOW

22. WORKFLOW (cont’d)
Open saved query. “Search by” comments are at the top

23. Change predicate to meet data need.
For example change
“HAVING brp.best_author LIKE 'Patterson, Jam%'”
to
“HAVING brp.best_author LIKE 'Atwood, Marg%'”
WORKFLOW (cont’d)

24. WORKFLOW (cont’d)

25. • DVD collection analysis by publisher
EXAMPLE PROBLEM

26. EXAMPLE PROBLEM (cont’d)

27. --2015-11-06 please direct questions to David Noe
--Collection Analysis By 710$a
--
--SEARCH BY SUBJECT IN "HAVING -Added Entry-Corporate Name.CONTENT ~*
'.*[STRING].*'" (IN JOIN WITH SUBWQUERY ALIAS AddCorpName )
--SEARCH BY MULTIPLE MATERIAL TYPES IN "WHERE BRP.MATERIAL_CODE = ' '"
--SEARCH BY YEAR OF PUBLICATION IN "AND BRP.PUBLISH_YEAR > '2010'"
--
SELECT
md.record_type_code||md.record_num||'a' AS record_number,
brp.best_author,
brp.best_title,
brp.publish_year,
DATE(br.cataloging_date_gmt) AS Cat_Date,
call.field_content AS Call,
SUM(ir.checkout_total) AS checkouts,
SUM(ir.renewal_total) AS renewals,
SUM(ir.checkout_total + renewal_total) AS total,
COUNT(ir.record_id) AS items,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.item_status_code='-' OR ir.item_status_code='t' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END)
AS active,
ROUND(SUM(ir.checkout_total + renewal_total)/COUNT(ir.record_id)::decimal,2) AS ratio,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'a%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS A,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'c%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS C,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'd%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS D,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'e%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS E,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'g%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS G,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'h%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS H,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'k%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS K,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'm%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS M,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'n%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS N,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'p%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS P,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'r%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS R,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 's%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS S,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 't%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS T,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'v%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS V,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'w%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS W,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'y%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END) AS Y
FROM sierra_view.bib_record br
LEFT JOIN sierra_view.bib_record_property brp
ON br.id = brp.bib_record_id
LEFT JOIN sierra_view.record_metadata md
ON brp.bib_record_id = md.id
LEFT JOIN
(SELECT
record_id,
marc_tag,
field_content
FROM sierra_view.varfield
WHERE marc_tag = '092'
GROUP BY
record_id,
marc_tag,
field_content
) call
ON br.record_id = call.record_id
LEFT JOIN
(SELECT
record_id,
marc_tag,
tag,
content
FROM sierra_view.subfield
--CHANGE THE TAG AGAINST WHICH YOU ARE SEARCHING HERE
WHERE marc_tag = '710'
--CHANGE THE SUBFIELD HERE
AND tag = 'a'
--CHANGE THE QUERY FOR THE FIELD CONTENT
--enter Added Entry-Corporate Name after ~ (POSIX regex) inside quotes
--use '~*' for case insensitive
--use ".*" to truncate or "." for a wildcard
AND content ~* '^History.*'
GROUP BY
record_id,
marc_tag,
tag,
content
) AddCorpName
ON br.record_id = AddCorpName.record_id
LEFT JOIN
(
SELECT
bib_record_id,
item_record_id
FROM
sierra_view.bib_record_item_record_link
GROUP BY
bib_record_id,
item_record_id
) svl
ON brp.bib_record_id = svl.bib_record_id
LEFT JOIN
(
SELECT
record_id,
checkout_total,
renewal_total,
item_status_code,
location_code
FROM
sierra_view.item_record
GROUP BY
record_id,
checkout_total,
renewal_total,
item_status_code,
location_code
) svi
ON svl.item_record_id = ir.record_id
--LIMIT BY BIB RECORD MATERIAL TYPE
--to include multiple material types, replace "= 'x'" with list, e.g. "IN ('x','y','z')"
WHERE brp.material_code = 'n'
--LIMIT BY YEAR PUBLISHED
AND brp.publish_year > '2004'
GROUP BY
record_number,
brp.best_author,
brp.best_title,
brp.publish_year,
cataloging_date_gmt,
call.marc_tag,
call.field_content,
AddCorpName.marc_tag,
AddCorpName.tag,
AddCorpName.content
-- ORDER BY YEAR PUBLISHED, DESCENDING
ORDER BY record_number

28. SUM(ir.checkout_total) AS checkouts,
SUM(ir.renewal_total) AS renewals,
SUM(ir.checkout_total + ir.renewal_total) AS total,
COUNT(ir.record_id) AS items,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.item_status_code='-' OR ir.item_status_code='t' THEN 1 ELSE 0
END) AS active,
ROUND(SUM(ir.checkout_total + ir.renewal_total)/COUNT(ir.record_id)::decimal,2) AS
ratio,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'a%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END)
AS A,
SUM(CASE WHEN ir.location_code LIKE 'c%' THEN ir.checkout_total ELSE 0 END)
AS C, …

29. EXAMPLE PROBLEM (cont’d)

30. WAS IT WORTH THE TIME?

31. "I need an extension for my research project because I
spent all month trying to figure out whether learning
Dvorak would help me type it faster."
https://xkcd.com/1445/
EFFICIENCY

32. QUESTIONS?
SUGGESTION?
OUTRAGE?

33. David Noe
noe.david@ocls.info