The FOLIO (Future of Libraries is Open) library system provides support for transactional data entry, storage, and usage to staff members in the Cornell Library. Functional data areas for the data include accounting, circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, collection development, and collection management. Reporting services for that data are providing through the FOLIO LDP (Library Data Platform) reporting database. Reporting users may access data by running SQL queries using DBeaver, interacting with Tableau data visualizations, and downloading data directly from the transactional FOLIO application system.
Working with data in the FOLIO LDP reporting database
FOLIO data in the LDP (Library Data Platform) are somewhat normalized. Some of the data is left untransformed in data arrays and must be extracted using specific JSON extract data functions in SQL. Queries against data in the LDP have many joins because there are many tables. The FOLIO Reporting SIG has created derived tables to make it easier to report on collections of related data. It also helps to create indexes on tables that are filtered within queries.
