Biblio::Isis 0.24

Biblio::Isis is a Perl module to read CDS/ISIS, WinISIS and IsisMarc database.

SYNOPSIS

use Biblio::Isis;

my $isis = new Biblio::Isis(
isisdb => ./cds/cds,
);

for(my $mfn = 1; $mfn <= $isis->count; $mfn++) {
print $isis->to_ascii($mfn),"n";
}

This module will read ISIS databases created by DOS CDS/ISIS, WinIsis or IsisMarc. It can be used as perl-only alternative to OpenIsis module which seems to depriciate its old XS bindings for perl.

It can create hash values from data in ISIS database (using to_hash), ASCII dump (using to_ascii) or just hash with field names and packed values (like ^asomething^belse).

Unique feature of this module is ability to include_deleted records. It will also skip zero sized fields (OpenIsis has a bug in XS bindings, so fields which are zero sized will be filled with random junk from memory).

It also has support for identifiers (only if ISIS database is created by IsisMarc), see to_hash.

This module will always be slower than OpenIsis module which use C library. However, since its written in perl, its platform independent (so you dont need C compiler), and can be easily modified. I hope that it creates data structures which are easier to use than ones created by OpenIsis, so reduced time in other parts of the code should compensate for slower performance of this module (speed of reading ISIS database is rarely an issue).