Time  Nick    Message
12:28 shedges kados: "Free and Open Source ILS" is an interesting suggestion
12:29 shedges as soon as you put the word "open" close to the word "free," it's easier to think of "freedom" instead of "free" beer.
12:30 shedges (as least it seems that way to me)
12:30 shedges I wonder how this would play in the UK?
12:33 slef    AFAIK, the preferred expressions are "Free Software" "Free and Open Source Software" and "Free/Libre and Open Source Software"
12:33 slef    the last two get abbreviated, of course (FOSS and FLOSS)
12:34 slef    free on its own is ambiguous. There's no denying it. I'm always amazed how ambiguous I'm told it is in the US, though.
12:37 shedges kados is right -- here it is instantly confusing to talk about a business dealing with "free" software.
12:38 shedges (even in the "Land of the Free")
12:38 shedges I think we can thank Bill Gates and the dot.com exuberance of the 90's for that.
12:42 slef    It's a fun way to split UK and US, if Bill Gates is responsible for confusion on that term there, and that spin-off from the Microsoft-backed club is responsible for confusion on "open source" here, isn't it?
12:42 shedges hehe
12:42 slef    anyway, time to go make tapas
12:42 slef    biab
12:42 slef    (when I will try to switch all my mailing list memberships to my new email address)
21:17 chris   heya nick
21:18 Nick    heyho
21:18 Nick    Kados around?
21:18 Nick    (as in, awake?)
21:19 chris   i think hes off watching star wars
21:19 Nick    chuckle.
21:19 Nick    OK
21:19 Nick    Am assuming Paul's asleep.
21:21 chris   hmm probably, i think its early morning there
21:24 Nick    What's up in your half of the globe?
21:25 chris   hmm, winter .. although its been pretty mild so far
21:25 chris   and tons and tons of work
21:25 chris   we are doing our second nz public library koha tho
21:25 chris   so thats all good
21:26 Nick    fantastic.
21:28 Nick    Where?
21:28 chris   its rangitikei district council, kinda the next district north from HLT
21:29 chris   its in the early stages yet, still trying to get the data out of their old system
21:29 chris   (always the hardest bit)
21:29 Nick    what is it?
21:29 Nick    something ugly?
21:29 chris   old dynix
21:29 chris   pick based
21:30 chris   so its proving to be a little tricky, im sure we will get there though
21:30 Nick    Ooooooo.
21:30 Nick    MV databases.
21:30 Nick    Always fun.
21:30 Nick    Fond coursework memories on them.
21:30 chris   and once we have somethng to show and the library is happy im sure they will do a press release
21:31 Nick    so it is is actually Pick?
21:31 chris   i dont know what it actually is :)
21:31 Nick    or a descendant (hoping for your sake something not THAT old)
21:31 chris   descendent
21:31 Nick    whew
21:31 chris   recall is its query language
21:32 chris   so i think we just have to come to grips with that
21:32 Nick    ...vision of Kapito holding punchcards up to light.
21:32 chris   heh
21:32 Nick    Going to be missing the idea that one row/col position is one piece of data I bet.
21:32 chris   yeah
21:33 Nick    Wonder if anyone's put together something to vacuum it out to XML or something.
21:33 chris   doesnt appear to be
21:33 Nick    (if only to get more tools to use on it).
21:34 chris   out to anything text based and id be happy
21:34 Nick    That bad?
21:34 chris   perl is great for munging text
21:34 chris   its just the lack of documentation that you get with proprietary systems
21:34 Nick    there may (heavens don't hold me to this) java something or other that'll talk to it odbc like
21:35 Nick    er, jdbc like.
21:35 chris   ie, you have to guess how it stores the data, cos the vendor (even if they still supported this product) wont tell ya
21:36 Nick    http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Databases/Pick/Vendors/
21:36 chris   im sure we will work it out tho, even if we resort to using its reporting features and just running lots of reports till we get the data we need
21:36 Nick    ouchies.
21:37 chris   otoh i think we can get the patron data out easily
21:37 Nick    http://kennethhunt.com/archives/000551.html
21:39 Nick    You don't feel like learning the funky Basic-like thing that probably came with it?
21:39 si      chris, do you have odbc access to the database?
21:39 chris   i dont think so
21:40 chris   its running on some form of unix, i think sco in fact
21:40 Nick    Betcha IBM might have something.
21:40 chris   but i havent been at the commandline yet
21:40 Nick    They ended up owning some of the old Pick flavored stuff.
21:40 chris   yeah
21:40 Nick    UniData/Universe as I recall.
21:40 chris   as i said, im confident we can get it out
21:40 si      if they support any kind of thirdparty report writer, then you can probably get ODBC
21:40 Nick    ...I think they even have a "personal version" download of one of them.
21:40 chris   it just doesnt have a nice "export to MARC"
21:41 si      which might be a way of getting all the data out
21:41 chris   si: the manual pretty much says "pay ameritech money"
21:42 chris   for anything other than the day to day running of the library stuff
21:43 chris   so i think it will involve some monkeying around, which wasnt unexpected
21:43 chris   we had to monkey around for HLT too
21:43 Nick    http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/307/ ... actually an article.
21:44 chris   it may actually be built on universe
21:45 chris   http://computing-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Dynix
21:45 chris   that sounds like it
21:47 chris   http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:-ZkfH8teomsJ:lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/web4lib/1997-July/010789.html+dynix+universe&hl=en&start=1&client=firefox
21:49 chris   maybe we can jsut let olwen loose on it
21:49 Nick    Universe'll have a modern toolset for it.
21:49 Nick    or, at least, the possibility of getting one.
21:50 chris   getting that on their old sco box would be the fun job
21:50 chris   oh for a universe_dump utility like mysqldump :)
21:50 Nick    (one of my fav things about a certain 3 ltr company, no matter HOW old it is, if they own it, there Is A Price Point to get service)
21:51 Genji   hmm.. mention of Koha in india, in a Blog. http://sankarshan.blogspot.com/2005/01/this-and-that.html
21:51 Nick    Chris:
21:51 chris   ahh thats indradg's blog
21:52 Nick    it's internal format should have a "findable" set of reserved characters marking out what's going on.
21:52 Nick    and some sort of definition file somewhere.
21:52 chris   i think
21:53 Nick    if you were feeling brave, you might (emphasis might) just be able to extract that out....
21:53 Nick    MV/Pick-land stuff orig. thought of itself as an OS, and (supposedly) had a file like notion.
21:53 chris   ahh right
21:53 chris   strings and perl u reckon :)
21:54 Nick    there's actually an opensource MV DB out there. Maverick I think it is called.
21:54 Nick    Random thought: could you attach a Z39.50 server to it instead?
21:54 chris   theres a question
21:54 chris   i think the answer is
21:54 chris   "Pay someone money"
21:54 chris   :)
21:54 Genji   http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/4408/1/ contains a report on Koha in Nelsonvile....
21:55 Nick    (equally old technology! wheee!) just, you know, query your way out of it over the network and pray you don't blow up the Sco box.
21:55 chris   yeah
21:55 chris   im sure we'll get it out
21:55 Nick    Betcha there's a z39 for it somewheres....
21:55 chris   ill let you know how we get on
21:55 Nick    if the ugly road must be taken, I'm sure I'll hear the screams from up here....
21:55 Nick    hehehe
21:55 Genji   how can someone blow up a box?
21:56 Nick    Asking for more I/O than it can handle.
21:56 Nick    ... in this instance.
21:56 Genji   ohhhh.... frying the bus?
21:56 Nick    nah.
21:56 chris   probably just make it not responsive until the load drops
21:56 Genji   ahh...
21:56 chris   not a nice look if you are tryig to issue books or something :)
21:57 Genji   software issue, not hardware issue.
21:57 Nick    or it crashes the os, and it don't come back after reboot (unhappy memories there...)
21:57 Genji   computer not fast enough to run software. software not inteligent enough to throttle requests.
21:57 Genji   something like that?
21:57 Nick    I suspect Chris et al will ask to have it freed up entirely to them, if it is reeaaallly reallly old.
21:58 chris   or even worse, computer not fast enough to allow software to throttle requests
21:58 Nick    or: software just cranky.
21:58 Genji   eewwww.... what we talking about here? a 386?
21:58 chris   yeah, ill only be doing it well outside library hours
21:58 Nick    with old stuff, one never knows what maintenance may or mayn't have been done, either.
21:59 Nick    if it is dynix, it is probably something proprietary-ish underneath.
22:00 Nick    Chris, there is a reasonable sized (but not necessarily cheap) set of Pick speakers out on the net.
22:00 Nick    if push came to shove.
22:00 chris   yeah, we have a captive pick expert we can call on too
22:01 Nick    (financial community here liked it for a long time, and they have Lotsa Money...)
22:01 chris   well not captive, but one we could persuade to help us out
22:01 Nick    Who's the expert?
22:01 Nick    (as in, anyone I know?)
22:01 chris   (she knows pick pick .. not this new fangled universe)
22:01 chris   :)
22:01 chris   olwen, she did a lot of work on the original koha
22:02 Nick    Nod.  depending on age, it may have a pick pick emulation mode.
22:03 Nick    The "bigger" versions  dealt with the total lack of standards by supporting each others variants after a point.  Thereby netting legacy transition business.
22:03 Genji   eh, just looking at a Pick database/os website. Old......
22:03 Nick    You're in luck.
22:04 Nick    Big Blue still offers the "personal edition" of universe.
22:04 chris   cool
22:04 chris   maybe i can run up a copy of it, and get there data in that
22:04 Nick    http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/u2/universe/
22:04 chris   then i can break it with no fear
22:04 Nick    Nod.
22:04 chris   thanks nick
22:05 chris   what are you up to these days anyway?
22:05 Nick    Runs on redhat.
22:05 Nick    Work.  school.  sleep. repeat.
22:05 chris   alien oughta sort that out
22:05 chris   :)
22:05 chris   must be nearly finished school?
22:05 Nick    about a year to go for second degree.
22:06 chris   nod
22:06 chris   what degrees did you do again?
22:07 Nick    Engineering version of CS, working on Master's in same.
22:07 chris   ahh cool
22:07 Nick    equally useful:  online docs for Universe.
22:09 Nick    also, if you poke around, IBM's got a deeply useful whitepaper on the Nested Relational idea, come to think of it.
22:12 chris   cool
22:15 Nick    http://www.maverick-dbms.org is the open source one.
22:15 Nick    dunno how mature that is yet.
22:16 Nick    http://www.maverick-dbms.org/links.html has links to other options.
22:17 Nick    good luck with that.
22:17 Nick    and be careful you don't get protested
22:17 chris   thanks
22:17 Nick    some consider a running MVDMBS an endangered species.
22:17 chris   :)
22:18 Nick    (visions of zodiacs buzzing around a server...!)
22:18 Nick    maybe not.
22:19 Nick    catch y'all later.
02:07 hdl     hi
02:07 indradg hdl, hi
03:07 Sylvain hi
03:12 hdl     paul
03:13 hdl     paul_away
11:02 kados   owen: any more ideas why the catalogers can't delete barcodes? I thought it was related to the missing item number but if they are still having problems it can't be that (since it's fixed -- unless it isn't)
11:04 owen    Maybe I'm misunderstanding their problem, but it doesn't even sound like they're making it to the items screen.
11:04 owen    Sounds like that form isn't working.
11:04 kados   but it's working for everyone else? ... just not them?
11:05 owen    It works fine for me.  I've tried it here, I've tried it from The Plains.
11:09 owen    I don't suppose anyone besides 'cataloging' has seen the problem firsthand
11:09 kados   not that I know of
11:29 shedges the item(s) they can't delete was still missing an itemnumber in the MARC record
11:30 shedges I think the fixitemno script just wasn't catching all instances of missing item numbers
11:30 kados   could be
11:31 owen    If that's what's going on, then their description of the problem threw me completely off.
11:31 shedges yeah, it was the old missing itemnumber problem
11:31 owen    So they weren't having a problem with the barcode form at all. It was pulling up the item record just fine?
11:32 shedges right, but they couldn't edit or delete the item because the 952u tag (itemnumber) was missing in marc_subfield_table
11:33 kados   I thought your script fixes that problem ... or maybe it's not getting all of them?
11:33 shedges not getting all of them, I suspect
11:33 kados   I can take a look
11:35 owen    kados, was there something left over from Friday that we were going to discuss?
11:41 kados   hmmm
11:41 kados   well we were bug squashing iirc
11:41 kados   are there any major bugs left?
11:41 owen    You were bug squashing and I was watching ;)
11:41 kados   :-)
11:42 kados   I've got a sample of chris's plucene stuff running
11:42 kados   http://search.athenscounty.lib.oh.us/cgi-bin/koha/plucene/search.cgi?query=cryptonomicon
11:42 kados   it's really slow unfortunately
11:43 kados   it's just a 'basic' title index
11:43 kados   with no optimization
11:43 kados   and nothing fancy
11:44 kados   for instance, if you search for something with 1000 results you'll get all 1000 back at the same time ;-)
11:44 owen    Handling paged search results is always a pain...
11:44 owen    Just look at Koha's member search for an example of that!
11:45 kados   yep ... the good news is that with plucene it's a snap to reorder stuff
11:45 kados   because we get the whole list at once
11:45 kados   as well as the 'title' for instance
11:45 kados   so it's easy to order by title or author
11:46 kados   the problem I'm working on now is optimizing this indexer
11:46 kados   so the searches will run fast (like Google fast)
11:46 kados   (that's the goal anyway)
11:54 shaun   hi owen and kados, you might like to know that my design for the website is reaching proof of concept stage - I should have something functional and attractive by tomorrow evening.