Software Tools

We started work on this database of keywords (memes) in the early summer of 96. It has not been a full-time project.

The tools we used to get to this stage (working prototypes and proof of concept) are:

• Sybase SQL Server v4.9
  This release of the Sybase engine was very robust and we have chosen to postpone any upgrades to later releases until an equally robust new version emerges.
• Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1
  Tcl/Tk is the language in which most of our Sybase tools (for DBA/designer activity as well as end users) are written. We find Tcl to be an extraordinarily flexible and speedy language for prototyping. Thanks to John Ousterhout and the Tcl developers; also special thanks to Mark Diekhans and Karl Lehenbauer (TclX authors), and to Tom Poindexter (sybtcl author). All the filters and tools described above were written in Tcl, except for one FORTRAN module.
• dot
  Thanks to Stephen North and Eleftherios Koutsofios of AT&T Bell, er, Lucent.
• CVS
  Thanks to Per Cederqvist and friends.
• HTML, NCSA httpd, etc.
• ghostscript and ghostview

We have purposely tried to restrict the role of commercial, licensed software in our DEIMOS instrument project, to maximize portability and longevity of our product and to limit long term costs. The only commercial products involved so far have been the Sybase server, Sybase 'bcp' utility, and Sun's FORTRAN compiler (needed for FITS table input).

Most of the development work has been done on a sparc5 running Solaris 2.5; however, all the code should be fully portable to OSF or most other OS.