Delete records while keeping configuration settings

Deletes data from a Koha instance (library) without deleting the configuration, authorized values etc.

Introduction

When to use? If you need to empty the Koha library of all its data without losing configuration settings and authorized values, e.g. borrower types, locations, libraries, media types... This will mostly be needed when preparing for large data operations like importing or migrating data into Koha from other sources, when one or several test runs have to be performed before the final operation can take place.

Please note: This takes place on database level and has to be done carefully! It is recommended to back up the database first!

Steps

In order to remove

bibliographic records and/or
items and/or
authorities and/or
borrowers and/or
current user sessions and/or
zebraqueue

Login to database

  sudo su
  mysql -u root
  use your_koha_library;

Execute the following commands

 SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;

Make sure to set this back from 0 to 1 after truncating all or your particular choice of the tables!

Biblios and items

 TRUNCATE items; 
 TRUNCATE deleteditems;
 TRUNCATE biblioitems; 
 TRUNCATE biblio; 
 TRUNCATE deletedbiblioitems; 
 TRUNCATE deletedbiblio; 
 TRUNCATE biblio_metadata;
 TRUNCATE deletedbiblio_metadata;

Authorities

 TRUNCATE auth_header;

Borrowers

 TRUNCATE borrowers; 
 TRUNCATE deletedborrowers;

Sessions and queue for zebra indexing

 TRUNCATE sessions;
 TRUNCATE zebraqueue;

Must be done after any of the TRUNCATE commands

 SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;

In some cases the TRUNCATE commands e.g. for items and biblioitems have to be carried out more than once to really empty the table. The result can be checked by

 select count(*) from table;

e.g.:

 select count(*) from biblioitems;

--> result must be 0

Reset Zebra index

 zebraidx -c /etc/koha/sites/your_koha_library/zebra-authorities-dom.cfg -g iso2709 -d authorities init
 zebraidx -c /etc/koha/sites/your_koha_library/zebra-biblios-dom.cfg -g iso2709 -d biblios init

References

How to delete all records and keep settings

Contents