| Time |
S |
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/To[…]ses/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.th[…]tionary.com/Dynix |
| 21:45 |
|
chris |
that sounds like it |
| 21:47 |
|
chris |
http://64.233.187.104/search?q[…]=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[…]his-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/lin[…]t/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[…]ery=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. |
