Frequently Asked Questions: Technical

History, current size, and future of this site

This site, which I call irishtune.info, is constantly updated to present current data selected from my private database, which I call my Tunography. An up-to-date measure of the size of my database is posted near the top of the Session Tunes page. Later versions of irishtune.info will release to the public much more of the information that is stored in my database, including detailed notes for each recording of the tune. Since this project is an unpaid hobby of mine, I cannot give a projected date for when I will create those additional features.

History

I started the Tunography as a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet around 1993 and began writing data manipulation and reporting routines using the database FoxPro ver. 2.6 around 1996. I converted the raw data to a Quattro Pro spreadsheet around 1997, and then converted the entire project to an Access 2000 database in late 1999. All data management operations, including generation of this Web site, have been carried out by Visual Basic routines within the Access database ever since then.

This Web site was launched in February 2000 as a beta-phase, private project. In November 2000, interactive database query features began to be added using a free ASP server and VBScript. During February-March 2001, the site moved from its free university Web server and from the free (but very limited) ASP query server to my own rented NT server (alan-ng.net), and I added affiliate links to CD and book retailers as an attempt to recoup some of my out-of-pocket costs. I bought the Web address irishtune.info in October 2001. During 2002 I undertook a major proofreading and proof-listening project. Then I was confident enough in the reliability of my data to finally undertake a public "launch" of the site.

I began the move from alan-ng.net to www.irishtune.info in October 2002. I rewrote the entire Web site to run on a Linux server, using the php and MySQL languages instead of Microsoft ASP/Visual Basic/SQL. I also enlisted the invaluable help of nine generous volunteer beta testers to help me redesign the site, especially the Tune Search and Finder. Karen Cornelius, Shelley Gordon, Craig Heilman, David Moulton, and four other helpful souls were the beta testers, and our stimulating conversations are partially recorded for posterity in the list@irishtune.info archives.

Current

I began redirecting traffic from alan-ng.net to www.irishtune.info on 25 November 2002. Simultaneously I sent out e-mail press releases announcing the existence of this site for the first time ever, including inviting people to link to and publicly discuss and review the site. Development of new features on irishtune.info will likely continue indefinitely. Certainly I'll be expanding the tune data regularly. You can trace the details of the site update history in the list@irishtune.info archives.

All Tunography (and therefore irishtune.info) data was entered and all programming was written and executed by me, leaving me with responsibility for all errors.

Future

Here is my to-do list for this site, ranked from highest to lowest priority. Feel free to give me private feedback on this list.

Add "More" feature to tune search results so you can see more than the top 30 results.
Create a custom full-text search which does not ignore the common English words which currently get ignored in the complete-word search.
Add phonetic search option for Irish-language tune titles.
Display performance information (musician and instrument) for each individual tune recording.
Add a search feature to look for tunes recorded by a particular musician or on a particular instrument.
Add "advanced" tune-title search form allowing you to use wildcards.

If you'd like to hear when I add new features, subscribe yourself to list@irishtune.info.

Can I use this site with any browser?

Yes. In fact, the entire site strives to meet global standards for accessibility to disabled people, especially for the sake of vision-impaired musicians who use this site.

I do optimize the site for Firefox (on Macintosh and Windows) and also make sure that everything appears as intended in the current version of Internet Explorer on Windows. In general you will see the intended visual layout with a browser less than 5 years old (Netscape 4+, MS Explorer 3+, Opera, etc.). If you haven't disabled your JavaScript, you'll get additional, non-essential features.

Nevertheless, I have designed this entire site to be usable by any browser, including text-only browsers such as Lynx, and for people who have limited bandwidth, such as in remote areas of the world without wired infrastructure.

How are search results sorted when using the Words mode of the Tune Search and Finder?

The following are quotations from the published documentation for the "fulltext" query feature of MySQL, the database I use.

"[. . .] the rows returned are automatically sorted with the highest relevance first. [. . .] Relevance is computed based on the number of words in the row, the number of unique words in that row, the total number of words in the collection, and the number of documents (rows) that contain a particular word."

"Every correct word in the collection and in the query is weighted according to its significance in the collection or query. This way, a word that is present in many documents has a lower weight (and may even have a zero weight), because it has lower semantic value in this particular collection. Conversely, if the word is rare, it receives a higher weight. The weights of the words are then combined to compute the relevance of the row."

"The MySQL FULLTEXT implementation regards any sequence of true word characters (letters, digits, and underscores) as a word. That sequence may also contain apostrophes ('), but not more than one in a row. This means that aaa'bbb is regarded as one word, but aaa''bbb is regarded as two words. Apostrophes at the beginning or the end of a word are stripped by the FULLTEXT parser; 'aaa'bbb' would be parsed as aaa'bbb."

See also: Which words are excluded from word searches?