2021-04-28 Meeting Notes

Mikhail Fokanov

• Update based on MM SIG's review of the Elasticsearch POC in Inventory
• Working on Inventory ES since December, current status of the Spring-based implementation includes:
  • Instances, Holdings and Items are merged into a single ES Index
  • Doesn't handle mutations to the data or the storage of the data itself, it handles only full-text searches; ES can only add a better search, it will never replace the database storage.
  • Multi-language fields (such as titles) can be configured for up to five different language analyzers
  • Search operators/relations such as boolean ops, brackets, all/any/exact search, wildcards (for certain fields).
• POC was evaluated by eight librarians, six of which found it successful.
  • Arguments against it included a lack of ability to query MARC fields (deemed not in scope), a UI that didn't have a cataloguing-focus as expected or wasn't user-friendly, more search operators (!=, ^)
• Updates in mod-inventory can be subscribed to and are subscribed to currently by mod-search. Other modules can also subscribe.
• Next steps? Should libraries use Inventory & Inventory ES in Iris? When does OG Inventory get "replaced?"
  • Front-end code is very early and POC. It is only a way to demo the backend functionality to users who did not want to evaluate the ES capabilities via Postman.
  • What's first: user feedback and evaluation OR coding/replacement of existing Inventory? It's too late to slot this into R2, so evaluation only in this upcoming release.
  • Whether the new functionality brought by ES is desired by users and time is specced for replacing Inventory remains a question for the MM SIG and PC.
    • Libraries have been very vocal about their desires for functionality like ES but there was extremely minimal volunteering by those libraries to review the POC (eight people). This means that it's difficult to define what Inventory features should be implemented, which results in uncertainty about how much work there is to be done by the development team.
    • TC agrees that a working group should be started under the MM SIG so that POC effectiveness can be evaluated and R3 development goals can be planned.
    • Action Item: Tod Olson will chat with Laura E Daniels and the PC about that working group. Mikhail Fokanov will nominate developers to sit on the working group so that new features that ES could bring are known to WG participants. This is important because ES shouldn't just be a drop-in replacement for Inventory, it should enable new functionality.
  • TC sees no obvious red flags with the usage of ES in Folio that would recommend a halt to development and planning.
    • Current issues do exist with how the module integrates with devops and there is no current agreement about whether the faults lie with the module or with devops. This needs to be solved and discussions are ongoing between the dev team and devops. This should not stop the previously suggested Working Group from evaluating and planning.
  • TC agrees that ES is still not "part of Folio." It's being used in the CI environments to enable the Inventory POC but future usage of ES by other modules should not assume that ES is already bundled into Folio.

Anton Emelianov (Deactivated)

• Previously, on testing:
  • There is already a lot of content about test guidelines but no portal that aggregates links to that content about E2E BigTest, Jest/RTL, Karate, jUnit, etc. Having docs spread out across GitHub, the wiki, and dev.folio.org exacerbates the issues. Anton Emelianov (Deactivated) will write the first draft of this on the wiki, hoping for support from TC members. 
• Review Anton's first draft