PICA-Modification is a Perl module to handle modifications on identified PICA+ records.

This module's packages (PICA::Modification, PICA::Modification::Request, PICA::Modification::Queue and PICA::Modification::TestQueue) are fully covered by unit tests, to be used in other Perl code.

See the Perl module PICA-Modification-App for client and server applications that can directly be used.

Modifications

A simple modification, implemented with package PICA::Modification consists of the following attributes:

• add: stringified PICA+ record with fields to be added (mandatory unless fields to be removed are specified)

• del: comma-separated list of PICA+ field to be removed (mandatory unless fields to be added are specified)

• id: fully qualified record identifier PREFIX:ppn:PPN (mandatory)

• iln: ILN of a level 1 record to modify (mandatory for modifications that include level 1 fields).

• iln: EPN of a level 2 record to modify (mandatory for modifications that include level 2 fields).

Creation of new records or levels is not supported.

Modification requests

PICA::Modification is extended to PICA::Modification::Request which adds the following attributes:

• request: unique identifier of the request

• creator: optional string to identify the creator of the request

• status: requests's status which is one of 0 for unprocessed, 1 for processed or solved, and -1 for failed or rejected

• created: timestamp when the request was created

• updated: timestamp when the request was last updated or checked

All timestamps are GMT with format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM::SS.

Modification Queues

This module provides the package PICA::Modification::Queue to manage collections of modification requests. A modification queue must implement the following methods:

• get($id) to return a stored modification request

• request($mod) to request and store a new modification

• delete($id) to delete a stored modification request

• update($id,$mod) to modify a stored modification request

• list( %parameters ) to list stored modification requests

To test additional implementations of queues, the unit testing package PICA::Modification::TestQueue should be used.