Databases

Databases

Spider allows the creation of local or remote databases. It supports chained databases, allowing several different databases to be scanned with one simple command. Importing of databases is limited at present to the standard AK1A databases such as OBLAST and the DB0SDX QSL database but will expand with time.

Creating databases

Creating a database could not be more simple. All the commands are sent from the cluster prompt as the sysop user.

To create a database you use the command dbcreate. It can be used in 3 different ways like so ..

dbcreate <name>

To simply create a database locally, you just tell the command the name of the database. This does not create the actual database, it simply defines it to say that it exists.

dbcreate <name> chain <name> [<name>...]

This creates a chained database entry. The first database will be scanned, then the second, the third etc...

dbcreate <name> remote <name>

This creates a remote entry. the first name field is the database name at the remote node, then the remote switch, then the actual node_call of the remote node, for example...

dbcreate buckmaster remote gb7dxc

Remote databases cannot be chained, however, the last database in a chain can be a remote database.

Importing databases

The only databases that Spider can currently import are the standard AK1A databases such as OBLAST or the DB0SDX qsl and address database. This will be added to with time.

To import such a database, first put the file somewhere useful like /tmp and then issue the following command ...

dbimport oblast /tmp/OBLAST.FUL

This will update the existing local oblast database or create it if it does not exist.

Checking available databases

Once a database is created, you will want to check that it has been added. To do this use the �[4mdbavail�[24m command. This will output the available databases. For example ...

dbavail
DB Name          Location   Chain
qsl              Local
buck             GB7ADX
hftest           GB7DXM
G0VGS de GB7MBC  3-Feb-2001 1925Z >

Looking up databases

To look for information in a defined database, simply use the dbshow command, for example ...

dbshow buckmaster G0YLM

will show the information for the callsign G0YLM from the buckmaster database if it exists. To make things more standard for the users you can add an entry in the Aliases file so that it looks like a standard show command like this ...

Now you can simply use show/buckmaster or an abreviation.

Removing databases

To delete an existing database you use the dbremove command. For example ...

dbremove oblast

would remove the oblast database and its associated datafile from the system. There are no warnings or recovery possible from this command. If you remove a database it ceases to exist and would have to be created from scratch if you still required it.