Published on [Permalink]
Reading time: 1 minute

'ILS Data: Unicorn'

Here’s another in the series.

Unicorn

Export
Built in. MARC21 or flat file formats. Unicode support is available as an extra.
Database Access
Mixed. No access to the embedded Informix database by default; API training is necessary for read-only access. Oracle is an extra option, but that only gives you a read-only license. For write access, you need a full Oracle license. SQL schema is supplied if you purchase API training.
API's and Web Services
Mixed. Z39.50 is offered (not sure if it's an extra). "API access" is an extra - basically you pay for docs of Unix-like commands and the ability to pay for API support if you screw up. API training also gives you some access to the client/server wire protocol so you can roll your own. No Web services. Utterly unusable XML API (it basically wraps the wire protocol with no abstraction).