About free-form database
As a natural product chemist, memorizing data and chemical structures
is routine in my job. Aside the brain, I was using a free-form
database (which also allowed definition of flelds on-the-fly) driven
through the emulation program 'wine'. In writing books it was of
tremendous help.
Since I updated to lenny, wine is no more (or I am not) capable of
running the engine. 15 days of frequents attempts (purging everything
and reinstalling) could not solve the issue.
I never moved to structured database as I preferred to use the
database as a paper notebook, addressing the linking to the brain.
I.e, it was nothing different from the traditional way we are used to
study and follow the literature. Now I am forced to change, and I was
also tired to follow the vagaries of wine. I thought to SQLite as the
lightest alternative. I found it heavily structured. Not the way I am
used in learning and planning.
Therefore, I thought why not turning to 'grep' and and perhaps also
'wc' and other commands for processing text. I have a text file
exported some time ago, the largest one of my databases (about marine
natural products) and I am (for the time being) extremely impressed by
the capability of grep. I can even retrieve - without fields - which
marine organisms have been collected (for natural product extraction)
between, say, 15 and 25m depth (a data retrieval that was only allowed
by the wine-driven database through fields.
Well, enthusiasm if often momentary. Before embarking with grep and
allies, I wonder whether there is established experience with what I
have described. That would help indeed.
Thanks
francesco pietra
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