Welcome to Database Advisor

This is the page which will allow you to download the source code for Database Advisor (DBA), under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

What's available: A new, improved version of the code (dated March 17, 2000) is now available. This version now offers "instant gratification," whereby access to the results of the keyword search in each database is just a click away, without requiring the user to type in their search query again. Please note what software you need to load on your end to make DBA work.

Status of Database Advisor: The California Digital Library's SearchLight service, which was originally based upon the DBA code, has replaced DBA at the University of California, San Diego. Since we are no longer maintaining the code, please join the DBA mailing list and share your patches and improvements with other interested parties directly. We will not be releasing any patches or new versions of DBA ourselves. We encourage you to take the code and use it as you see fit, under the terms of the GPL. If you or your institution would like to volunteer to be the official maintainer of the DBA code, please contact Christy Hightower at chightow@ucsd.edu.

Subscribe to the DBA mailing list to share questions/answers and improvements to the code with your colleagues. To subscribe, send a message to majordomo@gort.ucsd.edu with subscribe dba-l in the body of the message. Once you have subscribed, to post a message send it to dba-l@gort.ucsd.edu. This list is for the exchange of technical information among those who are installing and maintaining the Database Advisor program in their libraries.

DBA Overview

This software was developed by the web programmers of the Science Libraries at the University of California, San Diego Campus. Database Advisor (DBA) was created to aid database users in selecting the best database for their query. DBA queries each database and displays the number of hits in each database as the results return. The user can select the number of minutes they are willing to wait (databases that do not return results in time are indicated with a timeout message). The program sorts these results so the user can see where each database stands relative to the others. Each database has a link which can be followed to access the database (though the terms of usage that the vendor sets still apply). Many databases will also support "instant gratification" which is a link to the specific results of the keyword search in that database, without requiring the user to type in their search query again. Each database has a Profile which stores information about the database.

To see DBA in action, visit the Public Version of DBA Sciences.

License Information

Copyright (c) 1998 Regents of the University of California.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License (available at http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/cop yleft/gpl.html) for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

This software was developed by the Science Libraries at the University of California, San Diego. For more information, contact Christy Hightower chightow@ucsd.edu at the Science & Engineering Library, 0175E, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California, 92093-0175.

Software Requirements

DBA is dependent on the following software: a Z39.50 client from Stanford, the GNU C compiler, and perl, version 5.004_01 or later. The details:

  1. DBA requires the Z39.50 API zclient software for Z39.50 connections. You can obtain the code from Stanford, but we have also included it with the DBA code. The source of the Z code is: Finkbeiner, Harold R. Sys Sw Developer, Info Tech Systems & Services, Polya Hall, Rm. 208. e-mail: harold_finkbeiner@Stanford.Edu. phone: (650) 725-3353 fax: (650) 723-3253 mail-code: 4136 date-updated: Dec 12 1997 12:15AM.
  2. DBA requires the GNU C compiler to compile the zclient code for your machine. More information on the GNU project and a list of FTP sites for GNU software is available.
  3. DBA requires perl, version 5.004_01 or later. You can get the lastest version of perl and the modules listed below from: www.perl.com You need these modules: CGI.pm and the LWP (formerly known as "libwww") Module (this includes: HTTP::Request; LWP::UserAgent; URI::URL). Note that LWP has its own dependencies which are documented when you download and install it. These perl modules are also available by going to the www.perl.com site above. These LWP prerequisites include: MIME-Base64, HTML-Parser, libnet, and Digest-MD5.

Download Instructions

Last updated March 22, 2000.