Web-based Voyager® reports with Michael Stapleton, Systems Librarian Kentucky Community & Technical...

Web-based Voyager® reports with

Michael Stapleton, Systems LibrarianKentucky Community & Technical College System

Kentucky Voyager Users Group MeetingSt. Catharine College, June 2, 2006

Michael Stapleton, KCTCS - KVUG 2006 2

What's it all about?

• A Web application for Voyager reports• Why?• What?• How?• Examples• Advanced topics (a brief intro)• Further inquiry• Questions


Climb every mountain…

• The dream: Libraries create and run their own reports

• Endeavor’s reporting solution– MS Access, with “canned” reports– ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) link to

Voyager– Detailed information about the Voyager table

structure and relationships


Ford every stream…

• Efforts to facilitate local reporting– Training and workshops– Support for installing Oracle client (ODBC

drivers)– Assistance to local report developers


Hey, batter!

• Can you hit a learning curve?– Strike one: MS Access

• Amazon.com says, “Microsoft Access has the steepest learning curve of all the Microsoft Office applications.1”

– Strike two: The Oracle client / “ODBC drivers”– Strike three: Class diagrams

• List of Voyager tables, their contents, and how they are related

• Formerly known as Entity Relationship diagrams. “E.R.” Wonder why they changed the name?


It’s a hard-knock life…

• Reality sets in– Like I’ve got all this spare time– Isn’t that what Paul and Michael are for?

• Result– Little utilization of Voyager information

• Collection development• Record maintenance• Inventory• Patrons• Fine/fee


That toolkit is our only hope…

• No, there is another…

• Voyager reports with PHP– Server-based Web application– Eliminates desktop support– Users select from a list of reports– Built-in customizable query criteria– Users can concentrate on the data, not the

process


Building blocks…

• Web server ( Apache / IIS )

• PHP

• Oracle client

Web serverPHP

Oracle client

Oracle (Voyager tables)


Tamagotchi?

Web server

Reporting application

• PHP scripts

• SQL queries

• HTML forms for selectable report criteria

• Style sheets and formatting for Excel

Oracle client SSH server

SSL digital certificate

libsys.kctcs.edu

encrypted

Active directory login to secure website

Voyager data (Oracle)

westlib.kyvl.org

PHP

encryption by Aug '06, pending vendor support

Report results sent to Web browser or MS Excel spreadsheet (user's choice)


Web server

• Apache or Internet Information Server?– Both support PHP– Both are reasonably secure– Apache is much easier to configure for PHP– IIS is much easier to configure for authorized

logins


• What is it?– A web-friendly scripting language

• How much does it cost?– Free

• Is it hard to learn?– Not if you have a good book, an interest in

learning something new, and a knack for standing on the shoulders of giants


Oracle client

• Enabling software for connecting to a database

• Oracle 9i client

• Oracle Instant Client


Synergy

• The whole…– “Zend Core for Oracle”

• …is greater than the sum of the parts– PHP– Oracle Instant Client– Zend Optimizer

• More stable and somewhat faster than PHP and Instant Client installed separately


A simple example…• Connect to Oracle

• Run a query

• Return the output in some format– HTML– Excel– Other (CSV or other delimited)

• Close the connection


Knee bone connected to…

• Step 1

// Create a connection identifier for Oracle.

$conn = @oci_connect( "user", "password", "//westlib.kyvl.org/VGER");


Query me this…

• Step 2

// Define a query, and assign it to a variable

$query = " SELECT location_code, location_name, location_display_name AS \"OPAC Display Name\", suppress_in_opac AS \"OPAC suppress?\", mfhd_count FROM kctcsdb.location WHERE (location_code like '$_POST[location]%') OR location_display_name like '$_POST[location]%'ORDER BY location_code";


Mumbo-jumbo…

• Step 3

// Begin the magic incantations...

// Prepare $query for execution using $conn, and assign the resulting statement identifier to a variable...

$stmt = oci_parse($conn, $query);

// Execute the Oracle statement...oci_execute($stmt);


Row, row, row…

• Step 4$nrows = oci_fetch_all($stmt, $results);if ($nrows > 0) { echo "<table>\n"; echo "<p><strong>$nrows records matched...</strong>\n<br />"; echo "<tr>\n"; while (list($key, $val) = each($results)) { // Show the field names echo "<th>$key</th>\n"; } echo "</tr>\n"; for ($i = 0; $i < $nrows; $i++) { // Display the query results... reset($results); echo "<tr>\n"; while ($column = each($results)) { $data = $column['value']; echo "<td>$data[$i]</td>\n"; } echo "</tr>\n"; } echo "</table>\n";} else { echo "No data found<br />\n";}


Quitting gracefully…

• Step 5

// Free all resources associated with the query statement...

oci_free_statement($stmt);

// Close the Oracle connection...

oci_close($conn);


Sorry, I didn't get that…

• Example script

• Demo

https://libsys.kctcs.edu/stapleton/KVUG2006/MFHD_count_example.txt

https://libsys.kctcs.edu/stapleton/kvug2006/mfhd_count_example.php


Selectable criteria…

• Interactive query criteria: PHP + HTML form<form action="MFHD_count_by_location_sql.php" method="post"> <select name="location" size="2"> <option value="A">Ashland</option> <option value="PR">Big Sandy</option> <option value="BL">Bluegrass</option> </select></form>

---------------------------------------------------------------

<php?> // MFHD_count_by_location_sql.php accepts variables from HTML form $query = "

... WHERE (location_code like '$_POST[location]%') OR location_display_name like '$_POST[location]%' ";</php>


Criteria as "handoff"…

This HTML form value... <select name="location"> <option value="Ashland">Ashland</option>...is passed to this variable in the PHP script... '$_POST[location]'...and interpreted by PHP as... 'Ashland'


• External and internal– Cascading style sheets (CSS)– "Include" files


Dumping to a file…

• Other output formats– Excel– Delimited

• CSV (Comma separated values)

– Raw MARC


Security, Part 1

• Browser-to-Web server: SSL

Web server / PHPSecure Sockets Layer

(SSL)

encrypted


• Web server-to-Oracle: SSH

Web server / PHPSSH server

encrypted

Oracle (Voyager tables)

Security, Part 2

Voyager serverSSH server


Further investigation…• CSS formatting for printing Web pages

– "Zebra stripe" tables?– Borders around table data?

• Progress indicator

• Advanced queries– Inventory: pass barcodes to an Oracle table?

• Criteria selectors

• Scheduled jobs and auto-posting results


Free stuff…

• PHP functions used in this presentation– http://us2.php.net/manual/en/– oci_connect(), oci_parse(), oci_execute(), oci_fetch_all(), oci_free_statement(), oci_close()

• Zend Core for Oracle– http://www.zend.com/products/zend_core/zend_core_for_oracle/

• Apache Web server– http://httpd.apache.org/

http://www.zend.com/products/zend_core/zend_core_for_oracle/

http://www.zend.com/products/zend_core/zend_core_for_oracle/


Wrapping up…

• Questions?

Thank you!

• Contact info and example scripts

[email protected]://libsys.kctcs.edu/stapleton/kvug2006/

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