Add a column for Loan Rule # to Loan Rule Table instead of using seq # in the table
Today the Loan Rule Number is the position in the Loan Rule Table. This means when we need to keep a lot of old and often Inactive rows in the table so that the loan rule numbers below don't change.
If you added a column with a loan rule number separate from the sequence in the table that the Loan Determiner table would point to, we could still mark old rules inactive until we are sure there are no more checkouts, but after we confirmed that we could delete the row completely and keep a much neater cleaner table with only active and recently inactivated rules.
Julie Cole
shared this idea
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Victor Zuniga
commented
Strongly support this enhancement. Separating the Loan Rule Number from the row sequence would make the Loan Rule Table much easier and safer to maintain.
Currently, deleting an obsolete rule risks changing the numbers of every rule below it, which can have unintended consequences for the Loan Rule Determiner table. As a result, libraries are effectively forced to retain old, inactive rules indefinitely simply to preserve the numbering structure.
Giving each Loan Rule its own persistent ID would allow libraries to retire and eventually remove obsolete rules without affecting active configurations. Beyond making the table cleaner, this would reduce the risk of determiner errors and make ongoing maintenance much more straightforward.
This feels like a relatively small structural change that could provide a significant improvement for system administrators managing complex or long-established loan rule tables.
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Jeremy Goldstein
commented
Having an actual id value and not just a row number feels like basic database design and would go a long ways towards preventing determiner related errors from occurring when rules may be deleted.