View source for iRefIndex MITAB2.5 Parser

A tool has been developed to parse the MITAB files produced in the [[iRefIndex Build Process]].

== Obtaining the MITAB Parser ==

The parser and associated resources can be obtained from this location:

https://hfaistos.uio.no/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/mitab/

Using CVS with the appropriate <tt>CVSROOT</tt> setting, run the following command:

  <pre>cvs co mitab</pre>

The <tt>CVSROOT</tt> environment variable should be set to the following for this to work:

  <pre>export CVSROOT=:ext:<username>@hfaistos.uio.no:/mn/hfaistos/storage/cvsroot</pre>

(The <tt><username></tt> should be replaced with your actual username.)

== Prerequisites ==

The following programs are required to use the parser:

* [http://www.python.org/ Python] (tested with 2.3.5)
* [http://www.postgresql.org/ PostgreSQL] (tested with 8.1.9)

== Running the Parser ==

Given a directory for the iRefIndex output files such as...

<pre>/home/irefindex/output</pre>

...run the parser as follows:

<pre>python parse_mitab.py /home/irefindex/output/All.mitab.03042009.txt</pre>

It will be necessary to change the date details included in the above filename to match the actual name of the appropriate file found in your own output directory.

== Creating the Database ==

A database can be created using the usual PostgreSQL tools:

<pre>createdb mitab_irefindex</pre>

This database is initialised as follows:

<pre>psql -f init_mitab.sql mitab_irefindex</pre>

Should the database tables need to be dropped (perhaps in case of problems with the import), the following command can be used:

<pre>psql -f drop_mitab.sql mitab_irefindex</pre>

== Populating the Database ==

The database is populated as follows:

<pre>python import_mitab.py mitab_irefindex</pre>

As a result, a number of tables representing the structure of the data should be available in the database. For applications built to use this data, indexes may need creating in order to make querying more efficient.

[[Category:iRefIndex]]