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Inmagic released version 15 of DB/TextWorks and WebPublisher PRO not long ago and many of you have or are upgrading to this new version, to take advantage of some of the great new features, especially in DB/TextWorks.

Please note that when upgrading, special attention must be paid to any forms and query screens inside your textbase that you use on the web. This may be forms that you developed yourself and use with WebPublisher, or they may be forms provided by Andornot as part of our Andornot Starter Kit or Andornot Archives Starter Kit. A change to DB/TextWorks in version 15 may affect the layout of your search pages and results.

The ReadMe file for version 15 notes the following:

Use Cascading Style Sheets to preserve formatting. In the Query Screen Designer and Form Designer the HTML tab of the Screen Properties or Form Properties dialog box includes this new option. Previous versions of DB/TextWorks asked the question each time you used Export Query Screen to HTML or Export Editing Form to HTML. In addition:

  • Whether cascading style sheets (CSS) are used is explicitly specified for each form, rather than for WebPublisher as a whole or by query screen.
  • The WebCSSOpt= DBTWPUB.INI option and the CS= URL parameter have been removed.
  • WebPublisher no longer tries to guess whether CSS will cause overlapping by automatically disabling CSS for forms that include Raw HTMLor Inline Images.
  • When DB/TextWorks upgrades a textbase for use with v15.0, all query screens and forms will be modified to have this option checked. If any of your forms include Raw HTML or Inline Images, which may cause overlapping, you may need to open them in the Form Designer to uncheck this option.

All forms that were provided by Andornot from our Starter Kits should not have Use CSS checked. With forms that you developed yourself, you may or may not wish to have this, depending on your form design.

If you've already upgraded and your web search layout is looking a bit like the morning after a wild night out (e.g. messed up), most likely it's due to the above and you simply need to open each form in the Form Designer, edit the Form Properties, and uncheck this box.

If you need assistance with the above, or have other layout issues, please feel free to contact us.

Overview

Default IIS application pool settings allow for no more than 5 uncaught exceptions within 5 minutes, and when this magic number is reached, the application pool shuts itself down. Uncaught exceptions are somewhat rare for us in the web applications we write because we have frameworks that catch and log errors. Some of our older web applications suffer from uncaught exceptions however, and so does Inmagic Webpublisher on servers where we host clients that use that software.

It used to be that text alerts would wake us up in the middle of the night screaming that sites dependent on Webpublisher were down, and we would remote in to the server to restart the relevant application pool. Well, that was pretty much untenable, so I wrote a script to restart the application pool automatically that would trigger when the application pool's shutdown was recorded in the Windows Application Event Log. A caveat here is that application pools usually shut themselves down for good reason - you shouldn't apply this script as a bandaid if you can fix the underlying causes.

Prerequisites

  • PowerShell v2 (get current version with $PSVersionTable.PSVersion).
  • PowerShell execution policy must allow the script to run (i.e. Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned or Set-ExecutionPolicy Unsigned).

Install the Script

  1. Register a new Windows Application Event Log Source called 'AppPool Resurrector'. Do it manually or use my PowerShell script.
  2. Put the AppPoolResurrector.ps1 script somewhere on the server, and take note of the name of the application pool you want to monitor.
  3. Create a new task in Windows Task Scheduler once per application pool you want to monitor
    1. Trigger is 'On an Event' Event ID: 1000, Source: Application Error, Log: Application
    2. Action is 'Start a program', Program/script: PowerShell, Add arguments: -command &" 'c:\path\to\apppoolresurrector.ps1' 'name-of-app-pool' "

Note the script activates to check whether the named application pool is still running, and then proceeds to restart it if necessary. There will be times it is activated by a log event to find that the application pool is fine, probably because the log event was unrelated to the application pool in the first place.

Script Content

Inmagic has released version 15 of DB/TextWorks, WebPublisher PRO and DB/Text for SQL

Highlights of this release include:

DB/TextWorks

  • New Field Type: Rich Text. The Rich Text field type permits you to change fonts (font name, size, color, bolding, italics, etc.) within a single field, align text, create bulleted lists, and so on. 
  • New Field Type: Call Number. When records are sorted by a field using the Call Number field type, Call Numbers are sorted the correct order.
  • Email Enhancements: Email dialogue more closely resembles sending mail from an email client, and includes fields for additional message text and a signature.
  • Limits on the number of fields, characters in field names, linked textbases, forms, query screens, and many other features have all been increased.
  • Substitution Lists: Additional Field Types now support Substitution Lists: Call Number, Code, Image, Link, and Number.
  • Import Document. Improved IFilter text extraction for PDF files, especially those with text in the margin. Also, line breaks are added after each period-space (". ") to improve readability.
  • HTML, XML and Text Encoding enhancements for increased compatibility.
  • As well as features for publishing to the web, assorted small fixes, and a few older, less-used features removed.

More information is available in the DB/TextWorks Version 15 Read Me.

WebPublisher PRO

  • Issues addressed with the InmagicBrowse app, and new features added for publishing to the web from DB/TextWorks.

More information is available in the WebPublisher PRO Version 15 Read Me, as well as the DB/TextWorks Version 15 Read Me and the DB/Text for SQL Version 15 Read Me.

DB/Text for SQL

  • In addition to the features added to DB/TextWorks and WebPublisher (see above), DB/Text for SQL is now supported on SQL Server 2014.

More information is available in the DB/Text for SQL Version 15 Read Me.

 

All clients with a current Inmagic maintenance subscription will be receiving emails from Inmagic with download instructions for this release.

This release also includes a new version of the PowerPack (Importer, Checker and Updater apps), popular for automating data import and full-text extraction and indexing, as well as the search-only DB/SearchWorks version of the software.

A new version of the ODBC driver is expected within the next couple of weeks.

 

Important Notice

Upgrading the Inmagic software to version 15 requires a change to textbase structures. Once made, only version 15 of DB/TextWorks and WebPublisher PRO will be able to access the databases. Therefore, plan to upgrade all servers, workstations and databases at once.

Clients using the ODBC driver should not upgrade to version 15 of DB/TextWorks, nor upgrade their textbases, until version 15 of the ODBC driver is released.

 

Please consult the system requirements and supported OSs and web browsers for DB/TextWorks, DB/Text for SQL and WebPublisher PRO,  available on the Inmagic Extranet.

 

If you have a current Inmagic maintenance subscription but have not received a notification email in the next week or so, please email advantage@inmagic.com with your serial number and email address so it can be resent. Please also remember to let us know if your contact information has changed so we can update our records and pass this on to Inmagic.

As always, contact us with questions, for assistance with this upgrade, or to renew an expired Inmagic maintenance subscription.

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to students at the School of Library, Archival and Information studies (aka iSchool) at the University of British Columbia. These students are taking LIBR 582: Digital Images and Text Collections and learning all the fundamentals of how to digitize materals, manage them, and provide online access. In particular, they are using Inmagic DB/TextWorks to build a database of digitized materials, and manage the metadata associated with them, as well as CONTENTdm from OCLC for web presentation.

In last night's class, I presented Andornot's common solutions for managing digital images and text. For those who missed the presentation, here's a recap.

Inmagic DB/TextWorks and an Andornot Starter Kit

We always recommend Inmagic DB/TextWorks as an easy to use database system for managing metadata about digitized objects, whether they are textual, photographic or audio-visual, and no matter whether born digitial or scanned from an analogue source. Paired with one of our starter kits, any library, archive, museum or other organization can be up and running in just a few hours. Information can be entered in simple data entry screens, by staff or volunteers, or imported from other sources.

Inmagic WebPublisher PRO

Inmagic's original web publishing platform, combined with an Andornot kit, can provide simple search access to a DB/TextWorks database. A modern web design can be applied so that the site can be used on tablets and phones. Features such as spelling corrections and facets are not available however.

Andornot Discovery Interface (AnDI)

The Andornot Discovery Interface (AnDI) uses the popular Apache Solr search engine to provide relevancy-ranked results, spelling corrections, and facets for search refinement. Websites built with AnDI include features for displaying images in various sizes, in list or gallery format, for embedding playback of audio and video files, and for viewing and browsing individual pages of digitized documents, with highlighting of search terms on the pages.

VuFind

The open-source VuFind discovery interface is very popular with academic and public libraries, and a growing number of special ones.

Inmagic Presto

Inmagic's current generation web publishing platform offers users the ability to configure their own screens and displays with no programming required, and now includes facets for search refinement.

Omeka

The open-source Omeka content management system can be used for metadata management as well as searching. It doesn't offer spelling corrections or facets for search refinement, but does provide a very easy to use web interface and an Exhibit Builder plug-in to develop exhibits of aspects of a collection.

The Galt Museum & Archives in Lethbridge, Alberta, uses Inmagic DB/TextWorks, WebPublisher PRO and the Andornot Starter Kit to manage its archival, museum and library collections. The archival and library collections have been searchable through the Galt website for sometime, and recently, the museum artifacts collection was added as well.

The latest addition, the artifacts collection, contains records for over 12,000 items collected over the past 50 years, reflecting the culture and history of Lethbridge and southwestern Alberta. Photographs are available online for about 10% of the collection right now, but more are being added all the time.

Collections Technician Kevin MacLean and his small team of assistants, interns and volunteers take care to go beyond the physical acquisition of an artifact: they also collect the stories of the people it belonged to and its significance to them. Now, these artifacts and related stories are accessible beyond the walls of the museum, a goal the Galt staff have finally realized with this project.

The three search sites share a common look and feel, with colour-coding to match sections of the website.

Canned queries guide users to popular topics, while quick and advanced search screens, with browsable indexes, allow them to find relevant results.

Search results are displayed in a functional, easy to view layout with simple navigation through records and back to search pages.

A selection list allows users to save records as they browse, then email, save or print the list, as well as request more information on the items from Galt staff.

On the server, each time an image is requested for display in search results, the Andornot Image Handler dynamically generates a thumbnail or enlargement, on-the-fly, from the master image. This saves time over manually creating each needed size.

Contact us for help making your artifact collection searchable using the Andornot Starter Kit for Inmagic software, or other search systems.

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