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Databases - ByteMARC

byteMARC

Welcome to

byteMARC

An open source bibliographic database system

CGI-version 0.03ß
by
Erik Bachmann 		Index

THE BASICS

byteMARC is a very simple database system for handling bibliographic entities catalogued in MARC. No special requirements - neither for the user - nor for the data.

byteMARC is a simple bibliographic database system where you can :

  • enter MARC based record by hand
  • index the keywords
  • search for keywords
  • display records

 

	BRIDGEKEEPER:	Hee hee heh. Stop! What... is your name?
	ARTHUR:		It is 'Arthur', King of the Britons.
	BRIDGEKEEPER:	What... is your quest?
	ARTHUR:		To seek the Holy Grail.
	BRIDGEKEEPER:	What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
	ARTHUR:		What do you mean? An African or European swallow?

		Monty Python and the Holy Grail
		Scene 23: The Bridge of Death

THE NAME ?

Well it's a joke! (bite-mark) etc. It's all related to bytes and the MARC format (MAchine Readable Cataloguing format) for handling bibliographic data.

THE QUEST ?

Big word for at small thing - really!

The prime goal is to make the process of handling records visible - it does not HAVE to be complex to work!

THE AIR-SPEED VELOCITY OF AN UNLADEN SWALLOW

Would it be carrying a coco nut ? (See Monty Python...)

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THIS SYSTEM

  1. It's Open Source. Please read the Open Source statement at: http://
  2. This is Free - as in free beer:
    • No payment require
    • No licensing
    • No upgrade fee
You are obliged to report all improvements you make back to me so we can all profit from our mutual work.

REQUIREMENTS

To run the system you need:
the source
Available from http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/bytemarc/download/
a Perl interpreter
Perl is available for almost any platform (See http://www.perl.org)
a HTTP server
If you want to use the CGI-interface (HTML version) you will also need a webserver like Apache (http://www.apache.org).
some additional utilites for WinDOS only
a sort utility
Please note that Microsoft for unknown reasons ditributed Windows 2000 and Windows NT with a sort program - that cannot sort (sic!). It tries to guess a sort order from your character set and you can't force it to sort numerically. This forces you to install a sort program that can handle a binary sort like the Gnu sort from Free Software Foundation, Inc. (http://www.gnu.org/ or www.deloire.com). Other wise the scan function will fail.

HISTORY

I the mid 70's Hans J.S. Andersen, The Royal Library School in Copenhagen, started building a "Bibliographic Subject Search" system called BES (Bibliografisk Emne Søgning). This system was made to help students build bibliographies and understand the techniques behind the handling of bibliographic data.

In 1987 BES was ported to PC and renamed to miCroBES. This system was sold in more than 100 licences in Scandinavia. And as an employee at Computer Service Center (Edb Service Center) at The Royal Library School I was handling documentation, distribution, support and training.

The original BES and miCroBES was coded in Fortran. In 1993 we started discussing how to proceed the development of miCroBES. A new graphical - but very primitive prototype was build in Visual Basic and a more suffisticated prototype was build in C. But the project was never approved by the management at The Royal Library School. Slowly but surely we felt that the project was grounded. The development of miCroBES was actually stopped in the autum 1994 (v. 1.8m).

I've felt that it was a pitty to scratch a quite succesfull, cheap and easy to use system. But to involve other developers - and to overcome some of the limitations - would require a complete rewrite of the Fortran code. I did code the basic system in C and played with the idea of one day turning the prototype into an working system. On the way I've played with several open database format and techniques like Xbase (http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/xbase/))

This project was halted when I left the The Royal Library School early 1995 to work with DDElibra at Dansk Data Elektroniks A/S.

In September 2002 Hans J.S. Andersen and I meet at The Royal Library School and Hans precented the idea of making a CGI server from the remaining miCroBRS code and turning it into Open Source. The source code is a mix of Fortran86 style code and low level assembler routines - and quite inpenetrable...

During October 2002 I suffered from a cold and faced a full week indoores. This was the time where I started coding a VERY simple database management system - just for fun.

Combining the ideas collected on the way - and with heavy inspiration from miCroBES and DDElibra - I managed to make a functional prototype coded in Perl in less than a week.

I choose Perl because it is my favourite programming language:

  • It is "practical"
  • easy to use
  • open source
  • free
  • available for allmost any platform

Final

So - here it is for you to play with: byteMARC

Drop me an e-mail if you have surgestions for improvements, if you like or dislike it - or just want to say hello :-)

Regards

Erik Bachmann

e-mail: e_bachmann@hotmail.com

www: http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/bytemarc/