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isbnsearch v0.5 released
by Neil Williams - Nov 2nd 2004 04:05:39
A distributed search portal of common sources of ISBN
numbers, with permanent caching of results. To
provide a free software, open-source, interface for
ISBN retrieval using HTML, SQL or XML to be
independent of any toolkits or software.
Version 0.5 has now been released and includes
support for the 13digit ISBN format and scripts to
recalculate all existing 10 digit ISBN records.
isbnsearch scripts will still output the 10 digit form until
the 13 digit forms start appearing.
There are also improvements to the matching.php
script and the two Perl scripts
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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13 digit ISBN number changes
by Neil Williams - Sep 8th 2004 02:59:08
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/iso/tc46sc9/isbn.htm
The 13digit ISBN is an extension of existing EAN barcodes
which isbnsearch already supports. As well as using the
existing 978 prefix (plus check digit), the 979 prefix will also
be used for ISBN details.
A 13 digit ISBN could therefore start 9-78 or 9-79. All
existing ISBN's will remain available as 9-78 and any 10
digit ISBN entered will be converted to 13 digits using 9-78.
To retain the ISBN as a unique reference, newly printed
ISBN's will eventually include the 978 or 979 instead of just
assuming 978 - in effect, the ISBN is becoming the EAN.
isbnsearch will require small adjustments to the database
tables and the scripts to correctly verify the 979 namespace
and this work is now under way.
Although 13 digit ISBN numbers won't be in use for a while
yet, isbnsearch will be moving to a 13 digit system by
adding the 978 and the appropriate checksum to existing
records using small changes to the database tables.
I anticipate having the basic transfer method in place for the
next release of isbnsearch (which will be v0.5). This will
enable sites to upgrade the existing tables to 13 digits. This
will be a background change *only* - to avoid confusion with
the users, all web pages and scripts will continue to display
ISBN values in 10 digit form for some time.
Currently, scripts convert any EAN to the 10 digit ISBN. The
next release of isbnsearch will reverse this so that all 10
digit ISBN's are converted to 13 digits using 978. v0.5 will
include a single script that recalculates all your existing
tables.
The new ISBN is a simple mathematical derivation of the
old and both are already supported, so each site operator
will be able to change over in their own time.
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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isbnsearch-0.41 released
by Neil Williams - Jul 12th 2004 03:38:53
isbnsearch-0.41
The greatest limitation on any isbnsearch site is the size of
the database files. On webhosts, webspace costs money
and most hosting accounts offer hundreds of time less
storage than a home system. This can translate into
millions of extra ISBN records. To tap into this resource,
v0.41 of isbnsearch has been adapted to access systems
that are installed behind firewalls and using dynamic or
static IP broadband connections. These portals are called
'private' and divided into 'internet-visible' and 'non-visible'.
There are two new files in www/, designed to help an
indexserver to communicate with linked portals, other
indexservers or private sites. missing.php does not need
configuration.
matching.php is a new script and will be a useful tool in the
overall distributed framework for isbnsearch.
Indexservers can now arrange to share data with other
indexservers to reduce the number of pending records
listed on overloaded indexservers. It should be called from
your local indexserver and can query all pending records of
the chosen remote indexserver, 1,000 titles at a time. Any
records on your site that match pending records on the
remote site will be written to a temporary XML file,
temp/missing.xml. matching.php then offers a WWW link to
the chosen indexserver to allow collection of the XML file.
You will see the results of the import and be provided with a
suitable link back to your own indexserver with the next
1,000 records. It is possible to automate this process using
GNU/Linux utilities like wget - please report all experiences
to the mailing list.
The chosen indexserver MUST be configured to accept
data from your site. Operators must request this service
from the maintainer of the chosen indexserver using the
mailing list by giving the full URL of their site. The
indexserver maintainer can then verify the availability of
your site - if this fails or is unacceptably slow, the
indexserver maintainer is free to decline the request - and
add appropriate details to the configuration of private.php on
the remote indexserver. Without this permission, you can
run the match against the pending titles, but the remote
indexserver will not import the data - the temp/missing.xml
file will simply be overwritten.
An 'internet visible' private portal has a static IP and a valid
DNS name, the indexserver must be able to resolve the
name and retrieve a file from the private portal using HTTP
on port 80. It is NOT necessary for HTTP on the private
portal to provide any service to the general internet. Any
private portal that cannot provide a local file over the internet
in this way (dynamic IP, firewalls etc.) is deemed
'non-visible' for the purposes of this section.
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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devel branch
by Neil Williams - Jul 5th 2004 15:02:19
The main isbnsearch package is now mature and needs
only small enhancements and bug fixes. The
isbnsearch-devel package, by comparison, is in continued
development and files and structures are likely to continue
to change considerably over the next few releases.
The aim is to increase the automation of the server update,
verification and reporting process. For full information, see
the isbnsearch project home page
http://isbnsearch.sourceforge.net/ or the HTML
documentation in the devel package.
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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Request for new sites
by Neil Williams - Dec 27th 2003 10:50:47
isbnsearch v0.4 marks the first stable release and
includes a proven mechanism to install all files without
any need to go asking favours from the webhosts. All the
information is in the package documentation.
Please help by installing isbnsearch at one of your
domains - the more sites are in use, the more titles can
be cached and the better the service becomes for the
users. Some 600,000 titles are cached already (<200Mb
on disk) but that is just a fraction of the total. A standard
webhost account with 100-200Mb is the basic setup but
if anyone has a Gig or two of MySQL space at any
domain, it would make my year!
With v0.4, the setup is all done at the start and the site
just continues to search, cache and link into other
isbnsearch sites without any admin involvement. At
10-20,000 records a day, initially, it won't take long to
build a sizeable database of your own.
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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isbnsearch 0.3-3 released
by Neil Williams - Dec 14th 2003 08:03:45
A distributed search portal of common sources of ISBN
numbers, with permanent caching of results. To provide
a free software, open-source, interface for ISBN retrieval
using HTML, SQL or XML to be independent of any
toolkits or software.
The largest change in 0.3-3 is in the devel/newservers.sql
file, adding over 400 new Z39.50 servers. All existing
servers have now been verified and the results for all
LoC Gateway servers are included in the
devel/servers.html servers reports included in the
package. To avoid duplication and to keep the size of
the package small, the two comprehensive server reports
(LoC Gateway and Net::Z3950::AsyncZ) are not included.
Instead, the smaller Gateway interface reports in the
package include full error status output and link directly
to the comprehensive Gateway server report on the
isbnsearch SourceForge home pages, which also host
the AsyncZ comprehensive server report. There are small
changes in the documentation. There are small changes
in the two cron perl scripts and in the MARC output
isbn.pl script. No database table structures have been
changed.
With all Z39.50 servers now verified, each isbnsearch
release will now include an updated set of these reports
to help you sift out poorly performing servers. Keep in
mind that server availability does vary and previously
useful servers can become temporarily problematic. This
does not require you to delete that server from your
tables! A lot of these problems are resolved without any
intervention. The www/status.php page now includes
improved output with server failures and successes.
Please discuss your concerns about specific servers on
the mailing list, BEFORE manually deleting records from
the servers table. Each new package release will include
a list of verified servers and servers with a history of
failure will be ignored by the isbnsearch scripts anyway.
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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0.3-2 release
by Neil Williams - Nov 14th 2003 11:27:51
Enhancements to the scheduled task scripts are the
largest part of this release - improved error handling and
reporting as well as optimizing the servers table to use
the less fault-prone servers less often.
That should, of course, read:
use the less fault-prone servers MORE often.
Sorry!
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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0.3-2 release
by Neil Williams - Nov 14th 2003 11:18:00
Enhancements to the scheduled task scripts are the
largest part of this release - improved error handling and
reporting as well as optimizing the servers table to use
the less fault-prone servers less often.
Substantial improvements to the documentation too,
including manpages for the first time.
Also ,the framework PHP bug in 0.3-1 is fixed in the
0.3-2 release.
One small adjustment is required to the servers table
SQL:
alter table servers add lastresult tinyint(4) not null default
0;
alter table servers add index lastresult(lastresult);
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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Bug fix patch for isbnsearch release 0.3-1
by Neil Williams - Nov 7th 2003 11:07:54
There is a bug in how portals notify indexservers as part
of the distributed framework. This is currently preventing
indexservers from retrieving range data from new portals
and therefore in referring queries to the correct portals.
The required variables are being overwritten because the
relevant lines of PHP appear too late in the script. The
patches for each of the xml/isbn.php, html/isbn.php and
sql/isbn.php files simply move the relevant lines to a
higher position in the script.
Updated files are already in CVS - see SourceForge for
more information on downloading from the CVS.
Browsing the CVS via SourceForge is currently 24hrs
behind the updates. The SourceForge Project Summary
page currently indicates no commits or adds to CVS but
this is a reflection of a problem at SourceForge - there
have been continuous commits and adds to the CVS
repository at SourceForge dating back to the 0.1alpha
release.
The patches do not alter any configuration data, no
configuration changes are required.
The patches are available from the SourceForge Project
page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ and
have been posted to the mailing list (so the patches are
also available from the mailing list archive:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=35484
Please apply the patches as soon as practical and post
any queries to the project mailing list:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/isbnsearch-devel
Neil Williams
isbnsearch.
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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