On Fri, 04 May, 2001 at 8:58 +0100, brodders@cwcom.net wrote:
Ooookay. Thanks all! Many ideas, but 1st port of call has to be a server. Doesn't ALUG have a server connected to UEA's JANET? Isn't that what we'd want?
Nope, no janet machine -- it's hosted on Martyn Drake's boxen, I think. Martyn -- any chance of postgres? :)
Postgres seems to have more approval over MySQL. What's the reason behind this?
Postgres is simply a better database. (Yes, MySQL has its uses -- it's not bad for sites such as slashdot. But I wouldn't want to encourage use of it until they fix the glaring errors and ommissions in it.)
Also, I hold no Postgres documentation. This will cramp my style as I've no net connection evenings. Anyone got some PostgreSQL books?
http://looking-glass.usask.ca:82/users-lounge/docs/ and other mirrors hold the documentation as a downloadable bundle in a range of formats. Of course, if you're using Debian you can just type "apt-get install postgresql-doc"....
How is Zeus??
Zeus rocks, but is non-free and therefore probably not best suited to our budget.
If we gave this some thought might be able to do without the librarian role.
We should still have a master librarian. Can I respectfully suggest something monkey-shaped? Perhaps an orangutan?
Want to minimise demands at client end (Java?). Who is expert to adjudicate on this?
Multiple clients! Multiple clients!
Dave, need to talk more about this - what's the form for big posts on such stuff?
If you have a big post to make, or a large collection of random thoughts, why not lob them into a web page (perhaps on the alug site?) and cite a URL here?
ALUGL Schema 0.1 is below - rip it to bits people! Why won't it work?
Why won't it work? Because it's impossible to read in my mail client...
Item Table =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Item_ID=09=09=09Primary key: Auto incrementing numeric Item_Type=09=091=3Dbook, 2=3Dmass media, 3=3Dhardware, 4=3Dhat etc
.... looks suspiciously like an "enum"-style field. Item type should of course be a link to a seperate table of items, to allow us to add "holographic storage" or "atomic disk" or "symbiot" in the future...
Title=09=09=09char 128 (name of item)
Char bad. Text good. See Postgres documentation on datatypes.
ISBN=09=09=0916 char (??)
Is there a defined format for ISBN numbers and a way to validate them? It would be nice to add a trigger to that field to automatically validate new values and reject incorrect numbers...
Publisher=09=09128 char
Would be inclined to link this to a sep. table too, so we can list all books by O'Reilly for example (and avoid problems of people entering OReilly, ora, o'reilly, o'reily etc).
Published date=09=09YYYY-MM (bought date)
Published date and bought date != the same....
Return Mode=09=091=3Dback to ALUG, 2=3Dwanders, 3=3Dback to owner
Again, link to a sep. table?
Anyone else use Dia? Might be worth knocking up the DB in that... or any other recommendations for db/modelling software?
Andrew.