Open SiteSearch Database Builder Utility Programs

The Open SiteSearch Database Builder software includes several utility programs for performing data conversions and building and managing SiteSearch databases. These database utility programs are described in the sections below.

Database Building and Management

The SiteSearch Database Operations Tool (SSDOT): A text-based, menu-driven interface for building and managing SiteSearch databases. This is the recommended interface to the tools needed for database building and maintenance tasks.

Data Conversion Utilities

ber2marc: Converts ASN.1/BER data to Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) format to test the MARC formatting classes at the ZBase level.

ber2txt: Converts ASN.1/BER data to ASCII format. Can also be used to validate the structure of a BER file.

marcconv: Converts MARC data to ASN.1/BER data.

sgmlconv: Converts Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) or other tagged data to ASN.1/BER data. Can also be used to generate a list of tags (or "fields") from SGML or other tagged data to assist in the development of a database tag definition (.dtd) file.

Database Build Software

initdb: Initializes the physical database files (HEDR, HDIR, POST, PDIR, and INDX) of a SiteSearch database.

pippin: Extracts terms from ASN.1/BER data into a new index postings (NIP) file for sorting by sortnip, and loads BER data and directory information into the HEDR and HDIR files respectively. The pippin utility is also responsible for stripping and/or replacing diacritic and special characters from ASN.1/BER data.

sortnip: Sorts the contents of a new index postings (NIP) file and outputs a sorted NIP file (SNIP).

rome: Processes the contents of a SNIP file to create/update the INDEX, POST, and PDIR files of a database.