new research into semantic categories

[ROBIN HAMILTON]

> If only I'd received this message before sending off my own
> ... I
> wouldn't have had as much fun.
>
> Robin, apology accepted -- and forgive me for an
> unnecessary lesson.
>
> Joel

Not at all unnecessary, Joel -- frankly, I couldn't write an SQL script to save my life.  Partly because I've managed so far to avoid having to use, and thus come to terms with, the nuts and bolts of Relational Databases.

I did however port a largish (800+ records, 15 fields) flat database *** from its origins in the OS9 database [and at this distance in time I can't even recall what that was called) through Superbase on the Atari, past Access, to where it's currently residing, still alive and useful and accessible through the database element of OpenOffice.  This final port because Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided Access was "non-essential" (unlike their version of VisiCalc, and Word) and thus began charging an arm and a leg if you wanted it as part of the Microsoft Office Suite.

So if you want to know where I am when it comes to databases, Joel, I know what a CSV file is when I meet one (because I have to) but don't expect anything more sophisticated on my part in this area.

Fun this, yeah, but perhaps we'd better stop at this point before we bore too many people on the list more rigid than they no doubt already are.  <g>

Best,

Robin

*** In case anybody is interested, and might even find it useful, it contained details of every single poem ever even remotely attibuted to Thomas Wyatt, with notations of MS(S), genre, translation/or not, and a few other things.  I was using it as a tool to try to decipher the exact nature and structure of the Egerton manuscript of Wyatt's poetry.

So you could poke a button (metaphorically speaking -- would that it were that easy to construct a Report Form in Access) and find out, for instance, which sonnets were found in all five major Wyatt MSS.  Stuff like that.  Mickey mouse in terms of programming, but the end result, once the data was stuffed in, actually was (for me at least) helpful.

End-R.

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