ALEG
Weekly Report - Week 46, 16 March 2001
What I've done
- ...nothing much new, just a lot of little fixes and enhancements and tuning of the
database queries, which is all quite time-consuming
- Set up some scripts to automate daily and semi-daily routines - database backup,
index and statistics housekeeping, and log rotation
- Fixed a major problem of the same title topic being 'shared' by many works
loaded from the original Austlit. This came to light when a single 'Untitled Review'
title was updated, and it changed all the 'Untitled Reviews'!
- Started coding a program to process the illustrators from the BAL load on
Tuesday, but haven't had a chance to return to it yet.
- Added phrase searching: enclose the phrase in double quotes, eg "merry christmas"
What I haven't done but need to do soon!
- Add general edits based on XSLT Schema (the Schematron approach).
- Revisit output formatting (especially to show all the newly
added attributes and relationships) and search screens.
- Drama data - work out what we need to store to record a "performance"
- AMLC bib data load
- Lu Rees Bib load (MARC format)
- WA writers data load
Next week
- System documentation
- BAL loading
- Investigate a problem with diacritics (AMLC bio's) being mangled when updated
- Discuss the approach we'll take to the Lu Rees non bibliographic data
- Enhance expression/manifestation selection search
- Remove the test works and agents added during training
Summary
- A very busy week responding to queries and feedback. We've noticed that
query response times are very sensitive to the Oracle optimizer's interpretation
of the current statistics which 'profile' the database and help it to
determine the best query path. I spent a lot of the week fiddling with the
knobs, generating different statistics and measuring the results. My aim is
to establish a stable environment with predictable performance. I think performance
right now (Friday afternoon!) is quite good, and next week I'll be making
simple changes one at a time to see what destablises it.
Links of the week