ALEG
Weekly Report - Week 20, 15 September 2000
What I've done
- Implemented simple object identifiers (which will be used
for storing ISBN, NLA immutable numbers, AUSTLIT unique identifiers
etc) not as topics but as 'light-weight' attributes.
- Worked with Fran installing the following software components
on the Library's Solaris box: Apache 1.3.12, Tomcat 3.1, Java2 SDK 1.3,
Samba 2.0.7. Everything went smoothly except the installation of
the Tomcat's mod_jserv to Apache (which allows the Apache web server to
communicate with the Tomcat Java servlet environment), due to a bug in the Tomcat
installtion notes (now resolved). We are awaiting Oracle 8.1.6
from the UNSW software distribution service (expected Monday).
- Loaded the work extract from AUSTLIT (just 26 works). This
forced me to think more about implementing a 'pure' INDECS style
event structure, or something simplier, probably faster but less
flexible. I've opted for the 'pure' approach, but if it doesn't
perform sufficiently well, I'll wimp out by replacing it with something
more pragmatic.
- Fran produced complete extracts from AUSTLIT of authors, titles, topics
and sources. I've loaded over 10,000 of the 36,609 authors (actually,
there will be more agents than 36,609 loaded into AUSTLIT due to pseudonyms,
and many more names due to variant names. The rest will be loaded Monday.
This load has been going smoothly except for @#!!$ dates - came across
a "BC" date, which the date model doesn't currently handle (fix next week).
Fran will be producing a complete extract of the works, and I'll load
them next week too.
What I haven't done but need to do soon!
- Document how ALEG will handle some tricky cases - The "Poets of the
Month" works from the mid 1970's and "Down the Lake with Half a Chook".
These are amongst the most "difficult" cases Tessa and Kathy can
come up with, so if we think the proposed data model can handle these,
we'll be happy!
Next week
- Install Oracle 8.1.6 under Solaris, move the NT database
and Oracle environment to Solaris.
- Load all the AUSTLIT data and hopefully at least some parts of the BAL/LAW data.
Processing the AUSTLIT sources looks like it will be a bit tricky, as
they weren't identified as regular titles in AUSTLIT, so I'll need to
create some matching code to link the source titles to ALEG manifestations.
Fran will also be producing a file of the reviews, so we'll have to see
how best to process them.
Summary
- It will be good to get the development finally running
on Solaris!