Coins database test....Comments/problems installing/running etc

[Guest rnsdb]

This topic is for those testers to post problems encountered in installing the coins.accdr database with integrated literature, and going through the readme to exercise all the functions, hopefully within 3 hours or less. Suggestions and feedback is needed, especially on whether both scroll bars show in the various datasheets or whether screen resolution/characters per inch settings have to be adjusted

 

These can also be posted at a topic set up on the rnsdb forum HERE

 

This is a powerful but complex relational database design, so expect some problems. As they are reported, it will be necessary to download updated files.

 

Ron

[one-kuna]

it is up to admin - but i consider above and other links related to creating and testing such database as an attempt to take our members and readers to that side and its forum; it is an easy way to bring such people over there; there are others legal ways to advertise, test and promote your new data base side; again, it is up to admin

[Guest rnsdb]

Since I'm not selling or advertising anything, it has an RNS history dating to 1993 with Brekke/Zander support, is free open source representing 5+ man years of thinking by a 77 year old advanced collector with no heirs, and is offered free as a volunteer project to those fascinated by Russian Numismatics, I'm puzzled by your position. A project like this requires its own forum or at least its own subforum. I pmd the two administrators tang and ccg asking to create a sub forum here for this but got no response.

 

There's a Russian Coins Catalog Project subforum which has had no posts in over a year and which from my reading of the few replies doesn't have a clue how to go about doing it, yet it gets subforum prominance

 

I think it would still require the specialized rnsdb forum as somebody has to create the multiple sub topics eg tasks, sizing problems, codes. There's room for both and there are two links at rnsdb to this general forum and the volunteer project topic. In addition, this forum has thousands of varied topics eg ebay auctions, 5K weight, while the rnsdb forum has only one, so I don't see how it could take anybody from here over as the rnsdb forum has nothing to offer except the project.

 

However, I'd have no problem folding it into this forum if I could administer it, although I think phpbb has better function and layout.

Almost every one of the topics on this forum has useful information that fits somewhere into the databases and would otherwise be lost in the maze of historical threads. As such, these topics would have eternal life available to everyone on demand via text and links in the 3 databases.

 

But it may be all academic as nobody seems interested in volunteering, and if that's the case, it will go back to being what its always been....a nifty true relational database for my own use.

 

Ron

[one-kuna]

thank you for your prompt respond

[Guest rnsdb]

one, thanks are appreciated, although I would rather have an acknowledgement that some of my arguments are valid.

 

Ron

[one-kuna]

i like this website as it is; once you posted an idea about your new web I thought you will be moving over there with your testing trials, and new participants.. and forum there..

[Guest rnsdb]

A number of discussion points came up in the Siberian forgery thread about the database which are perhaps more appropriate here. I will try to address a number of those points.

 

1. It's important to recognize that the Russian Forgery forums, Steve's wikidot and rnumis, and numerous others sources mentioned in various threads as being all that users need are NOT relational databases, but ad hoc web sites with images, text, links, and perhaps a search box scattered across the internet. You can't filter, sort, compare, extract, manipulate and display the myriad kinds of information shown in many of the screen shots I posted.

 

2. As far as mobile, a 7" phone or 10" tablet screen is completely inadequate for database work. Even laptop is too small. It's fine for email, news and games, or selling something, but not for relational databases

 

3. As far as porting to the cloud solution Steve favors, not only would you have a huge time, money, and labor problem doing that (which by the way nobody has done), but more importantly, before you can begin to do that, you have to have detailed data table specifications, codes, query relationships, display formats, report formats etc, in short detailed USER REQUIREMENTS. The desktop relationsal database is a stake in the ground for specifying those, but since nobody has tried it, how can it be determined what users want as function? My 30 years IBM experience showed me that users most often don't know what they until they see it. Did we know we needed Google Earth, iphones, Mapquest, Windows etc until it was presented to us? My question to the sales clerk when I take my wife shopping to Bloomingdales is "Please sir, can you help out my wife? She doesn't know what she wants"

 

4. But by far, the biggest problem in porting to an SQL server even with the tables, queries, dispay formats al laid out as they are in the test database, is that after spending 5 or 10 man years doing it, you might find that the 500 people who try it don't like it and wouldn't use it. Wouldn't it be better to find that out ahead of time?

 

5. As far as being too technical, how different is it from downloading and installing any software package to try out. We do it all the time. I've downloaded many trial programs, tried out the function, and didn't like it. But some I liked and kept. But it was no big deal to try it out. It's true I had to spend 3 hours figuring out Snagit, Quicken willmaker, Canon scanner software, Offline Commander etc, but we've all been doing that for the past 30 years with software.

 

6. As far as collectors doing their own homework, and having all they need on the internet, this is simply not true. It takes a lot of time, you have to search many sites, don't know about most of them, the sites you find won't link you to other sites to supplement what you're after, you still won't have the advantages of a relational database in terms of sorting, filtering, manipulating and presenting all the data, and you will more often then not, wind up with mediocre results. A site won't let you inventory your collection or show you all historical and contemporary occurances of the Constantine ruble. And 500 collectors say for the 1771 Siberian or Mikhailovich Corpus will do the same thing over and over wasting all that time and coming up with mediocre results when a few experts could put the results of all their work into the database for thousands who would then have their expertise.

 

7. To use an analogy, myself and 500 others interested in the Canary Island 747 crash could independently search out the internet and after a couple of hours get some kind of knowledge of the cause and results. But Wikepedia already has 4 pages of information already compiled and honed over time by a few people, with 20-30 links if you want more information. It's not a database true, but it is an example of what volunteer efforts can achieve in helping others. This is what Wiki is all about

 

Ron

[STEVE MOULDING]

- deleted by me - I don't want to be part of this any more

[Guest rnsdb]

Steve, rnumis is a well designed site, and with your permission I'd like to use the Russian images for the literature database. Some observations on your comments

 

1. While you indicate there is a SQL relational database behind the curtains, that's not what the user sees. I can't query your site to sort high to low on price, display only English titles, show titles in datasheet format with fields of data for lots, russian lots, currency, xchange rates etc, display only leather books, inventory my collection, and a hundred other things. That's because the data about the book isn't formatted into fields. There's just a text description. You may have bigger plans, but what I see is a web site selling books with images and one text field (but without the sort box )

 

2. While it's true as you say "there's nothing to download, nothing to install, nothing to fight, it just works", it's also true it doesn't do anything. It works the way all web sites work. There's nothing there I as a collector can use. Information on a book, links to articles written about it, what copies have sold for at auctions, pdf's of the contents, etc. No sorting, no filtering, no extracting, no line item datasheet display, no reports.

 

3. You list 33 books which you are selling versus a universe of 35,000 or more reference works and auction catalogs on Imperial Russian numismatics. Are you planning on listing and picturing those, even though you don't sell them?

 

4. What do you plan for the 7700 Brekke/Sevein coins and 1500 Russian medals?

 

5. While you may plan on rnumis evolving into some kind of Wiki volunteer cloud SQL relational database project, we're not going to see it in our lifetime. And even if you start designing it as such, you're going to need table layouts, query formats, display formats, report forms, and a hundred user functions. Where are you going to get them and how do you know those are what collectors want? Only one collector has stated those functions precisely, and they're reflected in the test database

 

I feel the test SQL relational databases, even though desktop, do everything I as a collector want. It's my feeling other collectors can use the same function but don't know it, but since nobody except you has tested it, there's no way to know.

 

To net it out, there's an existing final design collector desktop SQL relational database. It's up and running and incorporates all the known coins, and a good deal of the literature and medals. It provides all the essential information and sorting, filtering, display, reporting, inventorying, a mechanism for linking to pdfs and web sites, and other functions collectors should want.

 

This versus a web site selling books with images and a text description and no prospect of evolving into anything more in our lifetime. To offer up some distant future vision as a viable alternative to testing something currently up and running continues to puzzle me. Something about a bird in hand comes to mind

 

Ron

[STEVE MOULDING]

- deleted by me - I don't want to be part of this any more

[Guest rnsdb]

<<<technology could be put in place and your database ported. I understand it would be a lot of work, but it could be done>>

 

Steve, while you may have some of the Brekke/Sevein, literature and other data behind the curtain in your SQL database, it may as well be on Mars, along with any user interface to your database you may or not have planned. But in order to design such a user interface, you need collectors to tell you what functions they want, but so far, only one collector has stated those functions precisely, and they're in the test database.

 

It may be academic though, since you're not planning on sharing either your data or any user interface available to collectors as a Wiki project to get the missing data. Even your wikidot volunteer catalog project, which is not a database but a simple listing of catalogs, doesn't have links to let collectors read or download the pdfs of the catalogs which volunteers offered up.

 

You want me to port the database without having anyone test it beforehand, and are impatient with me for not having started the port. But without some indication from collectors that it includes most or all of the functions they want from the user interface, I'm not going to do anything. Aside from the man years of work at age 77, there's every indication I would be the only person using it. As the only user, why would I want to put all that work in to be able to go to the SQL server for my collector work when I can already do everything I want on my SQL desktop and save the round trip?

 

But more importantly, while wanting to share the database because I think it's what Russian collectors should want, even if they don't know it, I have a vested interest in wanting to fill out the database with missing data. Images, pdfs, links, forgeries, values, auction prices, descriptive data from the thousands of coinpeople.com posts to add to the minimal Brekke/Severin descriptions plus whatever's in medals and literature, etc. It's true the SQL cloud would simplify some of this, primarily in adding records and correcting data fields, but much of the data can be added very simply with the test database.

 

But here again, there's every indication so far that nobody would volunteer anything. The Wiki volunteer sharing concept, which you and I have both promoted, is a total failure with collectors. Your wikidot and Corpus translation project garnered very few volunteers, I think because they didn't see enough in it for them. But I'm still hopeful from the screen shots I've posted, volunteers would see many direct benefits to them. Reading jrns articles, auction pdfs, forgery comparisons, links, essential literature/coin/medal information, auction prices, inventorying collections, filtering, sorting, searching etc. But after 7 months there's no sign of even trying out the database, much less volunteering for any tasks.

 

I don't mean to be critical, Steve, but what you're promoting doesn't make any sense. If collectors don't want the functions of the test database, they're not going to want it on the SQL cloud either, just because it saves a download. And after all, a frown icon, "not the way to go, nothing to download, nothing to install, nothing to fight, it just works" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement for prospective testers to determine one way or the other. We're only talking 4 or 5 hours for testers to find out and come to some assessments. We've all been downloading and testing software for 30 years. As a collector, I've already come to my assessment.

 

And my vision, like yours, IS that the SQL cloud IS the way to go. However, the test database evolved over 25 years as an Access SQL desktop database before there was a cloud. And it has to be established there's a need, what exactly that need is, and that collectors will contribute something. The test database does just that. One of the 12 volunteer tasks HERE is to evaluate the various cloud porting alternatives with remote hosting. Native SQL/MYSQL rewrite, Access tables stored remotely with queries/forms/reports on the desktop, Office 365, Microsoft Sharepoint, Windows Azure etc are all options, But all of these are academic if 20 testers all say they wouldn't use it and wouldn't volunteer to input missing data. But hopefully many would and some variety of port could then be done

 

Ron

[Guest rnsdb]

Update: The web site is up and running.

 

The RNS database website http://rnsdb.x10.mx/rnsdb is down for a few days. I switched to a 3 year premium paid plan to get more storage and backup. In getting a domain with the same name, I was advised this will take several days for the domain to propagate through the network.

 

Ron

[one-kuna]

Moderators, please close this link from rnsdb who is violating Russian numismatic society copyright ! one-kuna

[Guest rnsdb]

I would have thought the copyrights to be held by Ran Zander and the hundreds of other Wiki volunteers who wrote them, not by RNS. I for one personally knew Ran Zander and he would not have wanted his hundreds of articles sold for profit. Jim and I go back 30 years. I bought many of my literature, coin and medal items from him. Tell Mr. Vlack? Not tell Ron?

 

It's all about Wiki. Wikepedia, which we all use, is free. The articles were contributed by volunteers. I don't have to pay Wikepedia $2 to read about Georgii Mikhailovich or the Battle of Poltava. The JRNS articles, too, were contributed by hundreds of volunteers who hold the copyright. Ask them if their work should be sold for profit? The literature, coin, and medal database all have links to the JRNS articles. Should someone doing reading on the Mikhaiovich visitors medal and who might want to buy one from Jim click on the 4 JRNS links to articles and get a message "Oops, sorry. You have to pay $5 a pop to read each of these".

 

How many times have all of us been reading the 1st page of an internet article and gotten that message? How many times have we paid? Does Steve own the copyright to the 180 forgery images, and should I pay him $3 for each image I copy and put in the database? If so, I owe him $540. When you all uploaded forgery images, did you pay when you copied the image? Does coinpeople.com own the copyright to all our posts?

 

Paying $25 a year for hard copy mailing to cover printing and mailing was one thing, but to make money charging $5 for a pdf with todays technology is an insult to Ran Zander and all the others who freely labored a good part of their lives to advance Russian numismatics. Do the monies go to their estates? Steve said he raised several thousand dollars selling jrns pdfs before his web site went down. I'll donate $2,000 to RNS if this will open it up, although I'd like to know what RNS will do with the money. I've already offered to donate the web site and Access code to RNS I guess my next step will be to offer $50 to test the database.

 

Nobody here seems to care about how much our lives have been enriched by Wiki or how much the Russian numismatic collector market would be expanded, enabled by Wiki free, readily available information. Russian numismatics is a hundred times more interesting than US numismatics. With the expanded number of collectors, Jim would sell 4x the coins at 50% higher bids

 

Your profile says your interests are auction catalogs. Dimitri Markov and George Kolbe, to their credit, have their auction catalogs on line as do dozens of other auction houses on Six Bid. Would you rather pay them $5 for a viewing?.

 

Let Wiki be the guiding light

 

Ron

[one-kuna]

Dear Sir, please re-read the Mr Elmen letter-respond addressed specifically to you - that letter clearly expalined about russian numismatic society and its rules and regulationas including copyright. Why so simple things should be repeated and repeated again to you. You personaly has no legal rights to take anything from journal and use without society permission on the web - so then please delete all as you promissed earlier. Period.

[Guest rnsdb]

Since you and I are adversaries, I feel free to speak my mind. Steve said almost all the sales of $2000 were pdfs. No cost. I will offer to buy the hard copy back issues donating $2000 to RNS. As far as future copies being hard copy, that's 19th century technology. RNS isn't going to reach 40,000 collectors with hard copy. The web site which I want to donate already has a link for the distribution of issue #92, via free pdf of course

 

The reason RNS membership slumped was nobody wanted to pay $25-$30 membership for 2 issues. I got back 35 letters saying they had dropped their membership, which was only a few hundred at its peak

 

If you read my post or visited the site, you would see the links are deleted, even though there's nothing in the JRNS issues stating the contents cannot be reproduced and my feeling that Ran Zander is the owner of the copyright of his articles. Please delete your moderator request to delete my posts for copyright violation. There is no violation. It's hysteria raising on your part. Ran Zander's estate will back me up. The only one who would probably sue me is Steve with his excellent articles on copper rarities. He doesn't realize instead of 85 people reading the articles, 40,000 would. His coins and literature sales would be worth a lot more if everything RNS did was directed toward expanding the collector base.

 

The best way to do this is give collectors some kind of free database filled up with volunteer data and free jrns pdf downloads. Screw the 2000 revenue loss. We're talking reaching 40,000 new collectors. The increased demand would make your collections worth a lot more. I'm too old to care but you aren't. If I find the JRNS articles still fascinating after 30 years, I have no doubt many others would. Russian numismatics, reflecting 300 years of turmoil, are interesting as hell. US numismatics are truly boring.

 

It also sounds like you didn't offer the Steering Committee role or my donation of the web site and Access code to Jim

 

Your posts on the Russian Coins Catalog Project advocating a Wiki approach to Russian numismatics shows you, gxseries who started the subforum, and Steve with his Wikidot volunteer auction pdf upload to be total hypocrits. You're no more Wiki then is Waikiki

 

Let Wiki be the guiding light

 

Ron

 

PS: If you want to settle this with scissors, paper, rock, meet me at the corral at high noon

[rsraghead]

I agree with you 100%, it should be free

[STEVE MOULDING]

- deleted by me - I don't want to be part of this any more

[Guest rnsdb]

I feel like I'm in Alice In Wonderland. The site exists HERE You set it up as Wiki site asking for volunteer auction uploads. You listed the catalogs you needed. I read the list of all the Hess catalogs you had and which ones you said you needed. Prices realized were listed seperate. It was a Wiki site.

 

Nobody volunteered. Had they done so, nobody would have gotten downloads either of what they uploaded or your own auction pdfs. I'll ask you again. Put your auction pdfs up as downloads on your web site. You said you had hundreds. I'd like to read some, but not for $10 of course. If you don't have time, send me the pdfs and I'll put them up. You are Wiki. right? I put up Hess prices realized and I've got a bunch more...Reichel, Mikhailovich Rare Coins but why should I put them up when it's attack mode here.

 

As far as not selling jrns pdfs, you said you raised several thousand dollars selling them at russiannumismaticsociety.org. Maybe not rnumis.com but what's the diff?. Who's going to be selling jrns pdfs which Elmen says he wants the revenue from if not you? I'm not dropping it. My gander is up. I'm sensing a cartel at work here, not Wiki. You all are trying to make money off of Ran Zander's life's work, and the work of hundreds of others. Why not make it honestly and use their work to expand the market for your coins, medals and original versions of the books? Jim is going to have to sell a hell of a lot of jrns pdfs to make up for the lost commissions from me.

 

Your mission statement:

"A

Wiki

([ˈwiː.kiː] <wee-kee> or [ˈwɪ.kiː] <wick-ey>) is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change most content very quickly and easily.

 

And that is it! As a part of Wikidot.com network this Site is a customizable piece of the Internet where Users can edit content, upload files, communicate and collaborate."

 

Let Wiki be your guiding light.

 

Ron

[STEVE MOULDING]

- deleted by me - I don't want to be part of this any more

[BKB]

ya all plain crazy... chill out, a database is no reason for all this argument. I should post a few nice coins, because all we talk about is databases, fakes, and copyrights. And, I get enough legal arguments at work...

[Guest rnsdb]

I'm taking this over to the Russian Coin Catalog Project, Everybody back in 2010 said they wanted a Wiki database for Russian coins. Now that they've got one, the same guys who started it and debated endlessly how to do it don't want it and go into attack dog mode. one-kuna, gxseries, bobh, bkb (yes the one and same), rhino, steve, etc

 

I'll make one last request for Steve to put up his auction pdfs or send me the pdfs since he's not planning on selling them. And since he's not planning on selling jrns pdfs either, I'm wondering who's going to sell them for Jim Elmen?

 

Ron

[gxseries]

Rnsdb, there has been a significant amount of complains with regards to your response. I suggest you either you realize that this forum is not a punching bag for your ideas or you are more than welcome to find other places. All posts with regards to "wiki related" with little or no numismatics materials will be removed promptly and further actions will be taken if necessary.