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| Time | Nick | Message |
|---|---|---|
| 12:28 | shedges | kados: "Free and Open Source ILS" is an interesting suggestion |
| 12:29 | 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 | (as least it seems that way to me) | |
| 12:30 | 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 | the last two get abbreviated, of course (FOSS and FLOSS) | |
| 12:34 | 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 | (even in the "Land of the Free") | |
| 12:38 | 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 | biab | |
| 12:42 | (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 | Kados around? | |
| 21:18 | (as in, awake?) | |
| 21:19 | chris | i think hes off watching star wars |
| 21:19 | Nick | chuckle. |
| 21:19 | OK | |
| 21:19 | 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 | and tons and tons of work | |
| 21:25 | we are doing our second nz public library koha tho | |
| 21:25 | so thats all good | |
| 21:26 | Nick | fantastic. |
| 21:28 | Where? | |
| 21:28 | chris | its rangitikei district council, kinda the next district north from HLT |
| 21:29 | its in the early stages yet, still trying to get the data out of their old system | |
| 21:29 | (always the hardest bit) | |
| 21:29 | Nick | what is it? |
| 21:29 | something ugly? | |
| 21:29 | chris | old dynix |
| 21:29 | pick based | |
| 21:30 | so its proving to be a little tricky, im sure we will get there though | |
| 21:30 | Nick | Ooooooo. |
| 21:30 | MV databases. | |
| 21:30 | Always fun. | |
| 21:30 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | for anything other than the day to day running of the library stuff | |
| 21:43 | so i think it will involve some monkeying around, which wasnt unexpected | |
| 21:43 | 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 | http://computing-dictionary.th[…]tionary.com/Dynix | |
| 21:45 | that sounds like it | |
| 21:47 | http://64.233.187.104/search?q[…]=1&client=firefox | |
| 21:49 | maybe we can jsut let olwen loose on it | |
| 21:49 | Nick | Universe'll have a modern toolset for it. |
| 21:49 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | Random thought: could you attach a Z39.50 server to it instead? | |
| 21:54 | chris | theres a question |
| 21:54 | i think the answer is | |
| 21:54 | "Pay someone money" | |
| 21:54 | :) | |
| 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 | 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 | 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 | ... 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 | 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 | if it is dynix, it is probably something proprietary-ish underneath. | |
| 22:00 | Chris, there is a reasonable sized (but not necessarily cheap) set of Pick speakers out on the net. | |
| 22:00 | 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 | (as in, anyone I know?) | |
| 22:01 | chris | (she knows pick pick .. not this new fangled universe) |
| 22:01 | :) | |
| 22:01 | 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 | 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 | Big Blue still offers the "personal edition" of universe. | |
| 22:04 | chris | cool |
| 22:04 | 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 | what are you up to these days anyway? | |
| 22:05 | Nick | Runs on redhat. |
| 22:05 | Work. school. sleep. repeat. | |
| 22:05 | chris | alien oughta sort that out |
| 22:05 | :) | |
| 22:05 | must be nearly finished school? | |
| 22:05 | Nick | about a year to go for second degree. |
| 22:06 | chris | nod |
| 22:06 | 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 | 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 | dunno how mature that is yet. | |
| 22:16 | http://www.maverick-dbms.org/links.html has links to other options. | |
| 22:17 | good luck with that. | |
| 22:17 | 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 | maybe not. | |
| 22:19 | catch y'all later. | |
| 02:07 | hdl | hi |
| 02:07 | indradg | hdl, hi |
| 03:07 | Sylvain | hi |
| 03:12 | hdl | paul |
| 03:13 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | well we were bug squashing iirc | |
| 11:41 | are there any major bugs left? | |
| 11:41 | owen | You were bug squashing and I was watching ;) |
| 11:41 | kados | :-) |
| 11:42 | I've got a sample of chris's plucene stuff running | |
| 11:42 | http://search.athenscounty.lib[…]ery=cryptonomicon | |
| 11:42 | it's really slow unfortunately | |
| 11:43 | it's just a 'basic' title index | |
| 11:43 | with no optimization | |
| 11:43 | and nothing fancy | |
| 11:44 | 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 | 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 | because we get the whole list at once | |
| 11:45 | as well as the 'title' for instance | |
| 11:45 | so it's easy to order by title or author | |
| 11:46 | the problem I'm working on now is optimizing this indexer | |
| 11:46 | so the searches will run fast (like Google fast) | |
| 11:46 | (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. |
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