News/Changes
2005-12-24
Merry X-Mas!
It was planned to release the first public beta release of JMDB v1.35 today,
but I was unfortunately able to break something with the latest changes. :-(
The PostgreSQL support has been finalized (index creation and transaction support on all tables completed). The query execution could be a little bit faster but it's working.
I know on which class I broke something (it's the thread that's executing the import) but I wasn't able to fix it yet.
The beta will be released immediately after I've fixed the broken class which will be after the holidays.
2005-12-18
I want to inform again about the latest updates...
- I finally (sorry - 3 weeks later than promised) put the russian translation for the Java Movie Database v1.3 on the website (see Download).
Read the instructions how to add it! - Fixed some bugs related to the multi language support and exported more text into the language property files (Icon Tooltips, About window,...).
- Added more transaction handling to the import - only very few files are imported without this support. I hope this will further improve the performance on PostgreSQL and newer MySQL releases.
- I'm also looking into the FTP download option, so new IMDb files can be directly downloaded with JMDB instead of using an additional FTP-Client.
- The JMDB Setup dialog has also been updated to make more room to display text (needed for the translation stuff) and the dialog can be resized (size is not [yet?] saved).
- It may be possible that you'll find a special X-Mas present on 24th December.
2005-11-21
The Warpstock Europe event (for eComStation and OS/2 user) is just over and I've got some updates.
First I would like to thank all JMDB users I was able to talk to at Warpstock Europe. I got some suggestions for new features that will be added to my todo list for the next Java Movie Database releases.
- Yesterday I received the russian translation for the Java Movie Database. The next release and also the current will have support for this language. I have to add a download link for the language file though (end of this week). I also got a list of some problems I need to address.
- Found some smaller bugs that have to be fixed for the upcoming release.
- PostgreSQL v8.0 seems to be a faster on eCS (eComStation) and OS/2 than on Windows XP. Unfortunately the port is crashing under heavy load every time I import the actors (crash at different actor positions - tested on two eCS machines with different OS/2 kernel versions).
The guy who ported it will look into it and so I think this will be fixed shortly (a port of PostgreSQL v8.1 is also in the pipeline).
2005-11-11
The latest progress/changes:
- PostgreSQL tuning still ongoing but so far no success :-(
If someone has information what could be changed to import more than 1 Mio. entries per table this would be great. - added PDF-Export to the upcoming JMDB release.
Here is an example PDF output for Batman & Robin (1997).pdf and as you may notice this could be more beautiful.
2005-11-02
The latest progress/changes:
- extended PostgreSQL/MySQL movies table structure
- worked on PostgreSQL performance tuning (ongoing)
- added a donation page
2005-10-31
I've finished the refactoring work except tweaking the PostgeSQL support (extending VARCHAR field and performance tuning).
A new testversion should be available in November.
I've also set up a PayPal account and will add a donation page for this project soon.
When I did a test import with the latest codechanges applied and used the latest IMDb list files form 2005-10-28, I noticed that the IMDb will hit 1 Mio. Actors+Actresses most likely with the next list file update.
Currently there are (List files from 2005-10-28):
- 472360 movies (Note: JMDB reported 17206 erroneous entries (incl. multiple entries); IMDb has marked round about 99% of them as 'SUSPENDED')
- 999944 actors+actresses (622766 actors; 377178 actresses)
2005-10-22
After several month without progress I've (again) started to work on the new JMDB release. There are still problems with the speed to import actors and actresses into PostgreSQL but I hope get it working soon.2005-10-17
Happy birthday IMDb. IMDb is now 15 years old.2005-07-13
Ok, I finished the REFRESH of JMDB v1.30! To download this release please select Download at the menu.Changelist:
- updated installation and script updates to allow external language files
- updated German and English translation
- added Spanish (many thanks to Sergi Tur Badenas at Acacha-Movies) and Swedish (many thanks to Olof Hjalmarsson) translation
- added sounds directory (again)
- updated weblinks (JMDB FAQ, MySQL JDBC Driver Homepage)
- removed local JMDB FAQ file (added external link to JMDB FAQ instead)
- added latest stable MySQL database driver (Connector/J V3.1.10 - 2005-06-23)
This driver allows using MySQL v3.23.28 up to v4.1.12!
MySQL v5.x is untested. - updated bugs.txt (some added bugs are already fixed in the upcomming JMDB v1.35)
2005-07-11
The download is currently not possible!!! I'll fix that shortly (should be up again on Wednesday - I hope), so stay tuned.I'll also update the JMDB release v1.30 with the latest JDBC drivers and the add the new language files (Spanish and Swedish). This is only a rerelease of JMDB v1.30 and not the release I'm currently working on.
I'm again very busy at the moment (exams at the university and work on two projectgroups), so there is more or less no progress until August.
2005-05-25
I released a new alpha version with some small bugfixes today and changed the header logo of the website!After shipping the new alpha version to some tester I received the Swedish translation (many thanks to Olof Hjalmarsson) of the Java Movie Database and the updated Spanish translation (many thanks to Sergi Tur Badenas at Acacha-Movies). On the swedish translation I need to fix the keyboard shortcuts.
The next alpha or beta version will then have the German, English, Spanish and Swedish language support.
We still want to support more languages...
Time to translate the complete application: 1.5 to 2 hours
2005-05-10
I want to inform you once again about the JMDB v1.35 progress!JMDB v1.35 is currently in late ALPHA stadium...
Changelist:
- changed import (plot/biographies) and updated the Detail Window to support the new IMDb©
Inline Links, which can be found in the plot and biographies since January 2005
(look at the last paragraph of the plot from Batman & Robin (1997) and you should
get an idea why I call it Inline Link).
Because I can't directly link this to the movie title or persons biographie only the URL is shown and clickable in the Detail Window but not the movie title or name of the actor/actress.
I'll try to get a solution with the IMDb LIST-FILE maintainers as soon as my workload drops a little bit. - changed the plot and biography import so that there is a blank line between each supplied
plot/biography entry.
This helps to get a better overview. - added Spanish language file, so the user interface is now available in spanish (many thanks to Sergi Tur Badenas at Acacha-Movies)
- renamed the language files, so Austrian users should now also be able to use the german localisation
- fixed bookmark, so it's not possible to add one movie multiple times
- fixed saving the window size of the Expert Result Window
- added a commandline option to start JMDB, import new files without user interaction (resume will be used if possible) and the application gets closed after the import!
- added searching for movies, actors, directors, producers plus details with PostgreSQL (some may still not work completely or are slow (-->unoptimized))
- restructure of the import (most of it -> removing spagetti code) and make it easier to add other RDBMS (e.g. PostgreSQL). This is still not finished!
- extended the field lenght of several table columns
- and some other small tweaks here and there...
I'll keep you informed about the development progress.
2005-03-05
There have been some reports we got over some corners regarding MySQL 4.1.x and problems with the Connector/J JDBC driver and the JMDB release 1.3!Please send us a message to email address on this page if you have trouble with JMDB.
It's possible that you can't use the v1.3 release (I've not tested it myself) out of the box with the newer MySQL releases. Here is a list of steps (FAQ has also been updated):
- download the latest stable Connector/J (currently v3.1.7; version number may change) from here
- extract the file mysql-connector-java-3.1.7-bin.jar from the subdirectory mysql-connector-java-3.1.7
- copy the file mysql-connector-java-3.1.7-bin.jar to your local JMDB directory
- replace the old mysql-connector-3.0.9-bin.jar with the new one (mysql-connector-java-3.1.7-bin.jar, or which version you use) in the JMDB startscript (start*.* file)
- now you should be able to use MySQL 4.1.x with the latest stable Connector/J driver
Please do not use the development versions of the Connector/J as those don't seem to work.
2005-03-05
FAQ updates for Connector/J upgrade and MySQL connection problems because of username and password.2005-01-25
The latest news is that PostgreSQL 8 (tested: Windows and eComstation aka OS/2) also works so far but the PostgreSQL support is not yet ready. The JDBC driver of PG 8 lacks some needed functions (don't ask me why) but the PG 7.4 JDBC driver works fine.Sorry, I currently can't say when I'm ready to release the version but I'm thinking about a JMDB v1.35 release. This would only include small extensions beside the PostgreSQL/MySQL 4.x support.
