[Archivesspace_Users_Group] EAD Importer and DAOs

[Custer, Mark]

Brian, Tim:

In my opinion, the entire digital object module deserves a review, and that would include both EAD imports and exports (in those exports, for example, the digital object title is repeated as both an @xlink:title AND a daodesc/p; and worse yet, the ASpace required identifier isn't even included in the export).

In general, I think that some of the import/export and migration tools in Aspace assume more than they should.  In this case, I don't think that the importer should assume that it must repurpose a title as a caption, especially since the caption is not required by ASpace. 

So in the short term, if anything is done, I'd think that the importer should stop duplicating the title information in two places in the database.  Any time data is duplicated like that (not to mention being repurposed for a completely different field), the odds for messy metadata goes way up.  

And there would be other ways to get around this in the meantime, such as shortening the DAO title and then updating it after the import... but even then, you'd have to ask:  do we really want that title repeated in the caption field? 

Mark



-----Original Message-----
From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org [mailto:archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] On Behalf Of Timothy Dilauro
Sent: Thursday, 24 May, 2018 5:26 PM
To: Archivesspace Users Group <archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org>
Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] EAD Importer and DAOs

Hi Brian,

I don't think it's a good idea to change the data model just to avoid imports failing, though there may be other rationales that result in such a change.

In the mean time, it might be useful to write some XSLT or some other custom code to perform sanity checks relative to ASpace restrictions ahead of EAD import attempts. In that manner, those non-conformant captions (and anything else you check on) could be tweaked before import.

Cheers,
~Tim

> On May 23, 2018, at 2:39 PM, Brian Harrington <brian.harrington at lyrasis.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Currently when importing an EAD, <dao>s are used to create digital objects.  As part of this process, the @title attribute is used for both the digital object title, and the caption under file versions.  I've recently run into a fun issue with <dao>s with @titles longer than 255 characters.  These titles are OK for digital_object:title, which is VARCHAR(8704) but too long for file_version:caption, which is VARCHAR(255).  So the import fails.
> 
> Should this be considered a bug?  If it is, and if one were theoretically considering a PR, would it make more sense to harmonize the length of the title and caption, or truncate the caption to 255 characters?  My inclination is just to increase the maximum length of captions, and rely on people to show restraint, but I know that other people might have different opinions.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Brian
> 
> --
> Brian Harrington
> Migration Specialist
> LYRASIS
> brian.harrington at lyrasis.org
> skype: abbistani
> 
> 
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