[HECnet] CSV Proposal

[Robert Jarratt]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-
hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Sampsa Laine
Sent: 19 May 2013 19:14
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] CSV Proposal

OK,

Here's a really quick draft of what I'm thinking, feel free to add your
thoughts

The parseable info begins with ".BEGIN-HECNET-INFO" and ends with ".END-
HECNET-INFO"

The following columns must be present and named in the first line of the
parseable block:

- ADDR - DECNET address of host
- NAME - DECNET node name of host
- OWNER - Person who owns the box*
- EMAIL - Contact email for the box's admin*
- HARDWARE - What hardware the box is running*
- OS - What operating system / software stack the system is running*
- LOCATION - Textual location of box, optionally long/lat info in some
sane
format*

I would suggest one small change. Location should be two fields. One is the
textual description of the location, and one is the lat/long. Both optional
of course. Would need a specific format for lat/long so it is standard and
can be plotted on a map.

Regards

Rob



The fields marked with an asterisk can be left empty but must be present
in
the header.

Example:

.BEGIN-HECNET-INFO
ADDR |NAME   |OWNER                   |EMAIL                       |HARDWARE                           |OS
|LOCATION                                       |NOTES
8.401|CHIMPY|Sampsa Laine     |sampsa at mac.com     |AlphaServer DS10
|OpenVMS 8.3       |London, England                         |Main SAMPSACOM system, SMTP
gateway (CHIMPYMAIL.COM)
8.400|GORVAX|Sampsa Laine     |sampsa at mac.com     |SIMH VAX on
OSX/Intel |OpenVMS 7.3       |London, England                         |MULTINET bridge to
Area 2, Area router
8.403|RHESUS|Sampsa Laine     |sampsa at mac.com     |HP rx2600 Dual 900MHz
|OpenVMS 8.4E     |London, England                         |File libraries available
8.500|PYFFLE|Sampsa Laine     |system at pyffle.com|VMWare
|Ubuntu+Pyffle BBS         |London, England                         |Waffle
reimplementation
BBS, log in as pyffle for access
.END-HECNET-INFO

On 19 May 2013, at 20:07, Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> wrote:


On 19 May 2013, at 20:03, Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> wrote:


On Sun, 19 May 2013, Sampsa Laine wrote:



On 19 May 2013, at 19:58, Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> wrote:


#6 is a provlem I've noticed with INFO.TXT.   There's no order.


When me and Steve Davidson originally thought of adding parseable info
to INFO.TXT we had the idea that the file itself would be free-form text
with
a machine   parseable block at the end, with delimiters.

If you look at http://rhesus.sampsa.com/cgi-
bin/hecnetinfo/hecnetinfo.com?q=chimpy you'll see what I mean, there's a
clearly defined block of machine readable CSV at the end.


How many people followed that though?


No idea - I don't think anyone ever wrote a parser.

But here's a brief outline of how I think this should work:

1. Someone (=me) defines the CSV format formally in a document
2. This document is passed around and corrected until majority is happy
with it
3. Someone (=brian) writes a parser
4. People nominate boxes from where their INFO.TXTs should be pulled
(one can cover a whole area or even more)
5. This is integrated into the DB using the parser from 3 periodically.