BS: Help Ask Sam Forum

Subject: Help Ask Sam Format
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 29 Sep 01 - 09:10 AM

I don't know if anyone can help me on this but it's worth a try. It started when I saw all the versions of the DT going and thought that just perhaps a true cross platform Java version may be a good idea - something that could be downloaded and run locally in ANY Java enabled browser rather than worrying about Windows, Mac, DOS versions, etc.

Anyway, rather than try and work out the ins and outs of AskSam, I tried to ask about the Ascii version in case I could do anything with it but twice got no response to the question as to why the link does not work/ when it will be in the help forum.

I decided a couple of days ago that I was going to have to work from the ask file or the Donkey work file.

I've already got some form of the data into Microsoft Access and also got a text file conversion program written but they are incomplete as I can't fully work out the AskSam format - most worrying is I get a different record count to DonkeyWork (although working from that file gives me the same results as Donkey work). Hex sequence: 1B 02 is one end of record marker but there must be another one. Also there are a few other codes I can't figure - anyone got any ideas?

(START RANT) Anyway I guess I'll get there in the end - just seem to be on a downer at the moment - try to suggest and even write something that would allow the unanswerd permathread to be pretty near user driven and got about 2 responses, try to see if it's feasable to produce a cross platform version of the DT (and if I'm capable of - I'm no expert...) - no help in the help forum - I'm beging to thing usefullness to all is not a factor - it is who does it - Mudcat great - Jon Freeman - even if the idea is better or adds new options - no - he's not Mudcat - maybe treading on toes or pride rather than usefullness... a backwards philosophy when what I come up with I would always GIVE back to Mudcat (RANT OVER - and maybe I am just feeling paraniod)

For anyone who wants to try the text conversion as it stands, and maybe could tell me whre I am going wrong, it is at: http://members.tripod.co.uk/jonbanjo/DTText.exe. It works fine on my PC and may work on all Win32 versions. My worry concerns the stack size I use to read and work on the file in one go - I'm not sure how PCs with less than 48Mb RAM would cope.

Jon

---

Click for AskSam Website

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 29 Sep 01 - 10:57 AM

Oh just answered my worry about the conversion program. Tried it on a Pentium II 200 with 32MB RAM / Win 95. It gets there but takes 2-3 minutes. Whereas running on mine - (Athlone 1G with 256 MB RAM /Win 98), it takes < 1 second to convert the .ask file to text.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 29 Sep 01 - 11:31 AM

Just out of curiousity, Jon, WHAT actually is Ask Sam. I have seen the - Powered By Ask Sam - but don't know what or why!
I am not after a major technical specification, just an explanation for an intelligent layman!
Cheets
Geoff!

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: Les from Hull
Date: 29 Sep 01 - 11:50 AM

As far as I know, Geoff, it's a sort-of crossy platformy databasey formaty thingy. Or is that too technical for you?

It's pretty good at accepting any sort of thing like lots of text and searching it quickly - so that's why DT used the old DOS version. There's a Windows version (askSam for Windows v2.0b) which I got off a free disc some time ago - if you're interested I'll pass it on, or you might get it on a download.

Les

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: Les from Hull
Date: 29 Sep 01 - 11:52 AM

Or you might be forgiven for thinking it's what you do when you want to know how to play the accordion really well!

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: MMario
Date: 29 Sep 01 - 01:53 PM

Jon - wish I could answer your questions - but when it comes to database programming I haven't had the leisure to devote to it. PLEASE don't forget that a lack of response doesn't necessarily mean that people don't care or aren't thinking about your suggested options - but sometimes real life does interfere...

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 29 Sep 01 - 02:17 PM

Geof, AskSam is the thing used to hold the DTDatbase or at least the DOS version. I presume it is what is used to enter the data.

AskSam is a free format database. I don't know how much you know about databases but relational database such as Microsoft Access require fields to be defined and some sort of structure to be defined before you store your records which you can search and manipulate. AskSam is more like a wordprocessor in that you can enter data without worrying about a structure but it still has some database capabilities for searching, etc.

I'm not a fan of the free format databases as it can be difficult to convert them to other formats as there is no enforced sequence of fields within the data. My feeling is that they may be good if all you want to do is keep data for yourself and never wish to export it for to use elsewhere. Having said that, the DT database is made available for different platforms...

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: MudGuard
Date: 29 Sep 01 - 04:48 PM

Jon, don't know anything about AskSam internals, but the normal way to access a database from a Java program would be JDBC (Java Data Base Connection). But this would involve not only the database file, but a running AskSam DB Server and an AskSam jdbc package.

But perhaps this is a thing you could investigate.

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 29 Sep 01 - 08:57 PM

i've been a huge AskSam fan for well over a decade, It's a free-form database that allows you to define fields (if you wish to); access undefined fields (if you wish to); establish relational conections with other database files (iywt); search using Boolean (IF, OR, AND, NOT) or proximity considerations (iywt) and output whatever portion of the file you wish to. It does all this quickly, has extremely compact files, and has the great virtue of not requiring that everything you enter have the same number of fields.

I'm talking mainly about the old DOS version--the Windows version, while it has some slick features, isn't nearly as versatile (IMO), and takes up a good deal more space.

Consider DigiTrad. AskSam permits a search by several defined fields (filename, keywords, tunefile)as well as permitting a full text search (with wildcards) for any word, words or phrases in the file. It lets me include songs with no tune, one tune or several tunes; is capable of linking to a program that plays the tunes and stores all this in a file that's smaller than the text files of the songs themselves (this may not seem important until you try to download it). And you can easily export data to spreadsheets or other databases (though I can't see why you'd want to).

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 30 Sep 01 - 09:36 AM

Thanks Mudguard, I have searched for a JDBC driver and even a Windows specific ODBC driver but have been unable to find one.

Dick, I agree about the compactness and speed. Having said that, I took note about the rest of your comments and downloaded the 4.0 demo. I have been able to at least export to a text file which works. Trying something like a csv which is on the menu is failing for me - I get a 16K file which contains no text that I can find). Maybe I'll find something.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 02 Oct 01 - 05:41 PM

Thanks to Les, Jon, Dick and others for telling me what Sam does and why I should ask him!
Ta!
GtD!

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: GUEST,Tech Impaired
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 07:58 PM

Jon, I hope y'all come up with something that works like you were looking for.

Subject: RE: BS: Help Ask Sam Forum
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 08:36 PM

Well Tech Impaired I got the information I needed to get the .ask file into a text file and made certain other choices but I am struggling with Java at the moment, a) getting used to parts of the language and b) trying to see if I can get some degree of performance when I think I know what I'm doing. Maybe I don't...

Here is one for Mudguard. On the first time of excecution on my machine, this code can take 20 seconds to complete but on subsequent execution, it will complete in about 1 second (BuffRandomAccessFile is my subclass of RandomAccessFile and all I'm trying to do is read through the file one character at a time to see how quickly I can do it BTW).

   void readFile(){    

         int EOF;
           char Ch;
               try {
                BuffRandomAccessFile InFile = new BuffRandomAccessFile
                ("D:\\JBuilder\\MyClasses\\JavaDT\\DT.dat","r",4096);    

              do {
                  EOF = InFile.BuffNextChar(Ch);
                  }
                while  (EOF != -1);
                System.out.println("Job Done");
               }
           catch (Exception f)
           { f.printStackTrace(); }
    }
  

At first, I thought it might have been something to do with the file system and maybe bits were stored in a buffer in the computer but no - adding something like this:

if (FirstCall != 1){
FirstCall = 1;
return;
}

at the start of the method body to ensure that the method just returns on the first call results in the full run of the method excecuting in 1 second every time - sort of like the initial method call adds some overhead to everything contained in the method. Weird?

Jon