Hello All,

I once again come out of my cave with a progress report on Nova -- a semantic mapping system cast as an ILS.  There are several main pieces to it.  One is a domain specific programming language.  A second is the API to the database used to store semantic maps.  A third is the client/server system that implements it.

The Nova language is sufficiently far along to post a specification.  It's hardly perfect.

http://www.avantilibrarysystems.com

All of this is functional now in an alpha form.  Here is an example of a Nova program that defines a very basic ILS.  

http://www/avantilibrarysystems.com/library.txt

It gives an idea of how the language can be used and what it looks like.  It works.  There must be other ways to use Nova that am not aware of.

I want to break down mind prisons.  MARC is a mind prison.  The idea of a relational database has also become a mind prison.  So are a lot of other things if we let the tools we use define the way we do everything.

There will be more stuff coming out of the Avanti project.  Personally, I am at a point in my life where I don't care what I do.  I answer to no one now in Libraryland, so I will do this.  To Elliot Hallmark with your distributed library system: keep up what you are doing.  It is good.

Peter Schlumpf
www.avantilibrarysystems.com