| Re: IDL and sqlite [message #63572 is a reply to message #63460] |
Fri, 14 November 2008 15:54   |
Rick Towler
Messages: 821
Registered: August 1998
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Senior Member |
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I agree with Robbie, an improved dataminer should be part of the
standard IDL library. Database connectivity is critical to a number of
things I do every day and I end up using MATLAB or Python* for these
tasks, even though IDL would in other ways be a perfect fit.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned dataminer. I believe that it
ships with ODBC drivers for the major platforms. I've played around
with it a bit and while it was a little awkward it works. It costs
money, but it may be a viable solution to your problem.
In MATLAB I wrote a db interface using MS ADODB via MATLAB's COM
interface which works fantastically (better than their expensive
database toolbox IMHO). ADODB is windows only, but I thought I would try
the same in IDL and while it works it is very limited because of IDL's
lack of built-in data structures (IDL's COM interface cannot return
mixed type data which is just about any row of any database ever
conceived). I stopped development because performance was a requirement
and the thought of breaking queries based on the type of the returned
data and assembling the output after the fact was ludicrous (and there
were what I though were bugs in the COM interface). BUT, this might
work for you, especially since you can design the tables around these
limitations. And if I understand what you want to do you could do it
all with using all char typed columns. Possibly a solution if you can
stomach the windows only aspect.
I'd be happy to share the prototyping code I have which would get you
started.
-Rick
* We've talked about this a lot lately but this exemplifies the
trade-off ITTVIS is playing with when they focus so much of their
development on point-and-click analysis tools like the iTools at the
cost of additions to core functionality. They may be drawing in more
users who are uncomfortable with programming and like the features of
the iTools but they're losing developers who want a "smart and full
featured" language (whatever that is, you get the idea).
They probably don't see this in sales yet as most shops have lots of
legacy code that is still floating around but 75% of the production code
I am writing now is in Python+Numpy+Scipy+pyQt. At some point I will
not be able to justify the cost of my IDL license as more and more code
is retired.
And maybe they *are* seeing this in sales as there are 10 new users for
every one like me so IDL sales will only grow. That's good, although I
guess I am a little disappointed to see what may be the beginning of the
end of a personal era.
Sheesh. Now I am starting to sound like David. ;)
Michi wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I frequently have to deal with large amounts (~10000) of DICOM-files.
> More specific, I have to query all these files for certain DICOM-tags
> such as image number, echo time, series name, series UID, acquisition
> time and pick some files that match certain criteria. ATM, this is
> done by reading in the whole directory. This is tedious if it has to
> be done more than once.
> I came up with the idea, that this is a perfect job for a sqlite-
> database (www.sqlite.org), that is kept entirely in one file with no
> need to have a server running such as with mysql (This is essential
> for our application, since we distribute it as a virtual machine to
> physicians, and you can't expect them to install a mysql-server).
> There are many language bindings for sqlite, but I haven't found one
> for IDL.
> Does anybody have experience with using sqlite from IDL? This would
> just be the perfect tool for this job...
>
> Best regards,
>
> Michi
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