HW : Thanks Star-rats.

[Paul Mather]

Steve writes:

> > Just as a note, I am working on a searchable database of the Hawkwind
> > catalogue for the site (although it will take a while). I would like to ask
> > the subscribers to this list what they would like to see in a database of
> > this type. I have my own outline for this but would like to hear some other
> > views so that I can get it as close to being right first time round.
>
> Funny.  I just had to learn MS-Access for work, and I was already
> thinking in terms of a cross-referencing utility for the Hawkwind
> Discography/Codex.  You know, enter a keyword, click "search",
> and get back a list of all songs that contain that word, along
> with what albums/compilations you can find them on, etc...
>
> Huge amount of work, of course - not the least of which would be
> finding a way to "automatically" import all that frigging data.  (Of
> course, the best solution might be to find a lacke^H^H^H^H helpful
> assistant to enter it all by hand.)  :-)

Tsk, tsk.  Was nobody paying attention when I mentioned this during the
summer?  To recap briefly, I said:

a) I was toying with doing all this myself; just a matter of finding the
time.  (Alas, unlike Mr. Star Rats, I don't get paid to make flashy
Hawkwind WWW sites.;)

b) I already had a full-text retrieval system (SMART) indexing the
Hawkwind song lyrics, so you could do vector queries against the song
lyrics.  All that was needed was to do a WWW forms-based interface to it.

c) I'd written an AWK script that processed the Hawkwind codex and
produced importable files (sans notes, alas) for a Hawkwind song database,
from which could be produced both the Hawkwind Codex and the Hawkwind
Discography (instead of maintaining two separate databases, as is done
now).  I may even still have the MS-Access file I created using it.

d) Using the database in (c) as a basis, I was thinking of creating a more
fleshed-out Hawkwind tracks database, and, using something like mSQL,
making it WWW-accessible (a fairly easy task in itself).  However, it
would be neater to use an object-oriented database system, as the Hawkwind
Codex lends itself nicely to an object-oriented approach.

I dunno if this is more grandiose than Mr. Star Rats was after.

Btw, if it helps any, I can make available a tar/zip file of all the
Hawkwind song lyrics, one song per file.  (Handy if you want to index the
songs, or include them into WWW pages.)

Cheers,

Paul.

obCD: John Mayall, _Blues From Laurel Canyon_

e-mail: paul at csgrad.cs.vt.edu                    A stranger in a strange land.