Jim’s Development Blog

As of today, the basic edition has been downloaded 3,409 times. People seem to be hearing good things about the software and giving it a try. The web site had more than 67,000 page views during 2010, and the search engines tend to place musarch.com in the top ten results when you search for ‘museum software’. Satisfying results; thanks to everyone who gave the package a try, and particularly to those who made helpful suggestions along the way.

Work continues on a new web server. I asked users for suggestions about the desktop software, and there were several good ones submitted. When I get back to that part of the project, I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, send them in (support at musarch.com).

One overlooked opportunity for a small organization to distribute information about its collection is to produce a PDF report which can be posted to the web site. In the Reports menu of the Museum Archive software, you can specify that a report be “sent” to a PDF file format. Uploading the resulting file to your web site and creating a link is a simple way to let visitors to the site see information about your collection of Objects. And for a more interactive experience, take a look at the Musarch web server.

I’ve had a series of other issues to deal with, so I haven’t been working on the Museum Archive software project at all in the last month. That should change soon. The first order of business is to create a new version of the Musarch web server. Thanks for your patience.

The Museum Archive software project basic edition has now been downloaded 3,000 times since May 2009. Not bad for a little package designed for a niche target audience. Thanks to everyone who has tried it, and much thanks to all who have made suggestions and offered valuable feedback. I hope to release a new version of the Musarch Web Server soon.

Microsoft has a new protection package named ‘Microsoft Security Essentials’ that might not be very nice to your data files. It seems that MSE is not designed to be run in a multi-user environment. The software I write is designed to be run in a multi-user environment, so combining my stuff with MSE is playing with fire. I have had no reports of database corruption from my users, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence in the newsgroups of problems. I recommend that you (1) backup your data often and (2) use some other security package instead of MSE if you are running my software.

With the start of another school year, the Museum Archive software project is really taking off. Total downloads have now passed the 2,200 mark, and the new Musarch Web Server is a popular addition to the software.

Most small organizations can’t envision putting their collections on the web - they figure that it will be too much work, that they don’t have the expertise, or that it will be too costly. With the Musarch Web Server, they’ve already done the work, it is easy to set up, and it is free. It’s time to aim high and get those collections online - go to http://www.musarch.com.

The new Museum Archive software project web server is now available here. This is version 1.0, so there are still some things to do, but it works well, and it will allow you to show the world the Objects in your collection with almost no additional work on your part.

Still to come:

• I need to do some additonal work on the image display function. Right now, I don’t deal with images saved within the database files. In addition, the printed reports do not use the web/images path - they still use the original image path embedded in the database. This means that printed reports will not always contain the image (it depends on where you put the web server software).
• The web server is not yet a Windows service, which means you need to start it every time your computer is restarted, and it does not run automatically if no one is logged in to the machine it is installed on.
• I’d like to add some additonal search functionality.

Feedback is appreciated.

I’m putting the finishing touches on this new addition to the Museum Archive software project. I should have it ready for download by Monday (Sept 13, 2010). It is free to all users of the software (basic or premium editions). It’s easy to install and it makes displaying your collection of Objects a snap. Keep an eye out for the release. (www.musarch.com)

I am making good progress on the web server for the Museum Archive software project. You can see a brief write-up here (PDF file). I hope to release a beta version by Labor Day. Feedback is appreciated.

Users of the premium edition of the Museum Archive software project are invited to contact me in order to participate in testing (playing with) the first version of the project’s web server. This is version 0.1. It has very limited functionality – it is really just a quick example to see how this approach might work.

You can see your Objects in a web browser. You can sort by column. You can use a locator field to jump to a specific Object in the list. That’s it – no viewing of the Object’s details, no editing, no reports. Just a simple browse list with basic locator and navigation controls. But it is a start. If you want to see how it works, contact me and I’ll send you a link.

The web browser produces the web pages served on the fly. There are style sheets and javascript code that make it work, although I am totally ignoring the user interface style at the moment. Eventually, you’ll be able to apply your own styles and make this look the way you’d like.

How does this work?

The Museum Archive software database exists in a folder on one of your computers on your network. This computer has an IP address. In this example, let’s say that the IP address is 192.168.1.20. Other computers on your network have similar IP addresses; these addresses typically all begin with 192.168.1, with only the last segment having a distinct value.

Continuing with our example, let us say that the Museum Archive software is located on the computer’s C: drive in a folder called Musarch. When you are working on that computer, the path to the software is C:\Musarch. You can allow other computers on your network to share the contents of the C:\Musarch folder, and they can access those contents by specifying a path from their machine to the shared folder. This is how you set up a multi-user environment to use the software.

What we want to do is place a new application in the C:\Musarch folder. This new app is a special purpose web server; its job is to watch a specific computer port for web requests and answer those requests when appropriate. The web server coexists with the rest of the Museum Archive software, and it accesses the same database. In this example, the web server watches port 88 (normal web browser traffic happens on port 80). When you start the web server app, it just sits there waiting for a web request to show up on port 88.

[I always advise you to backup your data before trying anything new, so back up now.]

Download the zip file from the link I provide in the email (you’ll get an email from me after you tell me that you are interested). Extract the contents to the installation folder of the Museum Archive software package – be sure to enable the use of folder names for the extraction process. You’ll end up with a musarch_server.exe file in the installation folder, as well as a new sub-folder called web. Double-click on the exe to start the server.

If you start a web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.) on the same computer that holds the Museum Archive software, you can point to this special web server and see your data. In the address bar of the browser, type this:

http://localhost:88

Localhost is a way of telling your browser to look at this computer, and the port number following the colon tells it not to use the default port number (80).

You can access this same web server from another machine on your network. Start the browser and type in the IP address of the computer running the web server, and don’t forget to add the port number. In this example, you could go to a computer with an IP address of 192.168.1.25, start the web browser, and specify this address:

http://192.168.1.20:88

Your web browser will communicate with the web server running on the computer with the IP address of 192.168.1.20 (the computer with the Museum Archive software on it).

[Note: Your firewall might ask you for permission before making these connections.]

Eventually, you can open up access to this special purpose web server to the whole internet. This involves setting up your router to forward requests made on a specific port to a specific computer on your network and so on. We won’t be dealing with this now. This example is merely a “test of concept”, something to see if I am on the right track as I attempt to develop a web-based component for the Museum Archive software project.

Is this safe?

The special web server can only do the tasks that I build into it, so in that sense it is safer than a general purpose web server such as Apache or IIS, which are designed to do many things and are much more flexible. Because the backend of the Museum Archive software project does not use an off-the-shelf database engine, it is not vulnerable to the usual tricks and techniques favored by malicious users. Plus, you can simply close the web server app at any time.

This example is meant to be used on your own computer (localhost) or, at most, on your local network. It only displays data. Play with it and let me know what you think.