Subject:
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Re: Inventory Helper app
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.db.inv
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Date:
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Thu, 5 Apr 2001 14:57:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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911 times
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Hakan Tandogan <Hakan.Tandogan@varetis.de> writes:
> > Dear Dan, Hakan, et al.,
> >
> > I have watched with interest the discussions here (lugnet.db.inv) about
> > inventory
> > accumulation, data formats, and methods. Since it seems that the effort to
> > centralize and standardize set inventories is reaching a critical mass, I
> > thought I might pipe in with some ideas.
Welcome. Another brain analyzing a problem never hurts ;-)
> > It appears to me that the main obstacle to standardization of a format that
> > is easily integrated with existing data is the dual necessity of legibility
> > (in browsing) and automatic parsing. For example it would be easy for a
> > script or applet to parse the data if all submitters wrote their entries
> > with no spaces and all line items separated by semicolon, right? But
> > that's not exactly user-friendly when it comes to looking at the inventory
> > later. One solution that I have toyed with is the use of a "mark-up
> > language" style format, with angle bracket tags to designate the different
> > fields in each record. I wrote a little data-entry app in VB to assemble
> > inventory data in this format as it is recorded. I worked on the project
> > as a means of mastering VB more than anything, but the end result works
> > tolerably well as a proof-of-concept, anyway. Ideally a function to export
> > the data in other formats, especailly user-friendly browsable, sortable
> > lists would be added.
Actually, as maybe Dan too, I'm more of a unix-centered guy. My
application (most of it still sits on the local CVS repository on my
laptop, but I'm in the process of migrating it to sourceforge) consists
of a set of scripts that import data to a database, and another set
that exports it. Maybe the following ASCII picture will clarify what
I built:
INPUT OUTPUT
inventory2db.pl -\ /- db2inventory.pl
\ postgres /
peeron2db.pl ----- database ---- db2canonical.pl
/ \
[ xml2db.pl ] -/ \- [ db2xml.pl ]
The "inventory" format is a simple, tab-separated format that
most people seem to have agreed upon (Quantity, Part number, Color,
Name and Notes), with some additional headers like Theme, Set name
and stuff like that.
The "peeron" format is the HTML pages Dan has on his web site.
I need to be able to import them into my database. In the meantime,
Dan promised to make his data available in a more easily machine
parsable format, but until this happy day, I need that script ;-)
The "canonical" format is simply the tab-separated format
above again, this time with some data manipulation that Jennifer
explained in <URL:http://news.lugnet.com/db/inv/?n=658>. I hope
that importing my sets will be even smoother that before ;-)
The "XML" format... I think that's what you meant by a "mark-up
language" style format ;-) I'm quite proficent with XML myself, thanks
to my work, but I wanted to gain some experience in the intricaties
needed by the inventories before I propose a DTD.
There are a few more scripts around the database that import
information such as the PAUSE set listing, the Peeron picture list
and stuff like that, but basically I use the database in the center
because I'm just too lazy to do all the sorting/searching I need
in flat text files.
> > I would be happy to make available the alpha-app and source code if you
> > would be interested. There're many more features I'd like to add,
> > including the ability to auto-generate HTML table versions of combined,
> > inline inventories. Also some sort of plug-in architecture for adding
> > filters to import different formats would be nice. Maybe this would be a
> > good candidate for open-source, group collaboration? I know there's
> > several AFOLs on RTL and LUGNET who dabble in VB and other languages.
Like Dan, I believe in a collection of tools that do their
job as perfectly as possible and use some judicious amount of glue (like
TkPerl or Curses if I need a GUI, a makefile if you need to automate
your jobs). If you need more "cross-platform" ability than perl gives
you, I'm inclined to use Java (another side-effect of my work ;-))
> > What do you think?
My above comments notwithstanding, I'd surely like to have a
look at your code, since seeing different approaches to a problem never
hurt ;-) If you like, I could make your source available on the
sourceforge project I registered for this purpose.
> > Dave L.
> >
> > P.S. I would be posting this to LUGNET if I had posting priveleges, but
> > since I don't feel comfortable with the requirements, I have never set up
> > an "account". I do subscribe by email, though, to the lugnet.db.inv and
> > .general mailing lists, among others.
Then you should be able to send your replies to the mailing list
shouldn't you? I'd rather like to have the discussion here in the news
group so we have a permanent record of our ideas. If you don't feel
comfortable with the LUGNET requirements, can I please have your permission
to forward your comments to the group?
Regards,
Hakan
--
"Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature"
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Inventory Helper app
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| Hi, Assuming (from the last paragraph of his mail) that he intended this for our small group here, I'm forwarding Dave's mail to the group. I'll respond to the content in my next posting. I hope, since he subscribes via email to this group, Dave (...) (24 years ago, 5-Apr-01, to lugnet.db.inv)
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