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Technical Services Report: January 2008

System news and work completed

  • Installed the latest version 18 service pack on Dev18.
  • The second Oracle 10G, Version 18, and Integrated ILL Upgrades started on January 2, 2008. The upgrades did not go as smoothly as expected. Version 18/Integrated ILL was made available to staff again today. Numerous manual steps must be performed in the ILL2 upgrade process. The data for this upgrade is from the December 29th backup. The aleph tables were synced up on December 28, 2007.
  • The production server (Alto) crashed on December 27th. SUN replaced a bad CPU on December 28th.
  • Extracted a complete set of data for the Discovery Tool on Lute. Reconfigured the database split to consist of nine separate databases grouped by region.
  • Created a new Acquisitions report, Summary of Expenditures by Budget and Object Code (mnpals-47) and put into production.
  • SUN picked up the old development server hardware and components from the old production server.

Work in progress

  • Ongoing system maintenance and upgrades.
  • Attending Indexing Task Force meetings.
  • Continuing to work on PALS Support Center tickets.
  • Continuing to work with the UNIX system monitoring software.
  • Continuing to work on LibProxy.
  • Continuing to perform weekly updates to the Authorities database on Harp.
  • Working on a new disaster and file recovery plan for backups.
  • Working on SQL reports and services recommended by the Reports Group.
  • Working on installing EZProxy on one of the new Linux servers.
  • Working on manual changes and set up for Version 18 and Integrated ILL.
  • Discussing outstanding Support Incidents with Greg Gosselin, Manager of Support Services for Ex Libris.
  • Continuing to work on the Discovery Tool. Still need to populate the databases with the complete set of bibliographic records. Additional work also remains to be done regarding updates.
  • Working with Yankee Book Peddler to set up St. John’s/St. Ben’s (SBJ) for EDI and using their Gobi product which is similar to Blackwell’s Collection Manager. Tested the ftp process on Lute.
  • The suggested Marcive loader workaround still needs to be tested on Lute.
  • The last Marcive records were loaded in October. The November through January files have been downloaded and will be loaded as time permits.
  • Waiting for p_manage_18_p (record loader using parallel processes), and “golem” fixes from Ex Libris.
  • Waiting to hear from Ex Libris about problems with discounts and funds when using Blackwell’s Book Services Collection Manager to create order records in Aleph.
  • ISRS is ready to test the cash file process, but we need an enhancement to the Aleph processes that handle this function. An enhancement request was submitted to Ex Libris. We will be working on an alternative as time permits.
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