M204wiki:Database download

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Revision as of 19:41, 11 November 2010 by Alan (talk | contribs) (warning about losing local changes)
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Sirius Software offers free copies of this wiki to anyone interested in the material. The copies are formatted in XML, appropriate for loading to your own installation of Mediawiki, or for use in any of the after-market products designed to present Wikipedia or Mediawiki content offline.

How to get a copy of Sirwiki

To take a copy of the Sirius wiki, point your browser--or other HTTP client application--at one of the following URLs:

http://wiki.sirius-software.com/images/sirWiki_full.xml
http://wiki.sirius-software.com/images/sirWiki_current.xml

sirWiki_full.xml contains the full Sirius Wiki (minus user records, security groups and "talk" pages), including all past versions of each page. As of November 2010, this file is approximately 7.2 megabytes of data, and expected to constantly increase in size.

sirWiki_current.xml contains only the latest update of each Sirius Wiki page (minus users, security groups and "talk" pages). This copy provides the latest version of all material but without the page history. As of November 2010, this file is approximately 2 megabytes in size, and expected to increase in size but to always remain smaller than the full version. This is probably the copy you want.

Both of the above files are refreshed every night, at midnight EST, from the Sirius Wiki.

Updating the Wiki

If you make changes to your local copy of SirWiki and refresh from the source at Sirius, your local changes will be lost. The download we provide is a full refresh, and no incremental option is currently offered.

If you'd like to contribute to the Wiki, please do it directly on the Sirius wiki.

What to do with your copy of SirWiki

Most likely you are taking a copy of the Sirius Wiki because your Model 204 site does not provide internet access from your site during work hours. Keeping a local copy of the Sirius Wiki provides the Sirius documentation in a format that can be kept as up-to-date as you like.

If you want to present the Sirius Wiki in its original format you'll want to install a local copy of Mediawiki, the software behind the Siruis Wiki:

 Mediawiki: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

There are a variety of methods for importing the Sirius wiki dump, all explained at the Mediawiki site:

 http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Importing_XML_dumps

Once you have a copy of Mediawiki installed, the simplest way to load the Sirius wiki content in a single step is via the script in maintenance/importDump.php (documentation provided at the above link).

Alternately, you can forgo the local installation of Mediawiki and use one of the aftermarket readers designed to import and display the Mediawiki XML dump. The most popular one is Wikitaxi (Windows only; no Linux or OS/X version is provided):

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#WikiTaxi

A number of other viewing options are explained at the above page. Of course Janus SOAP customers are welcome to import the Sirius Wiki into Model 204 and write their own reader using the SOAP API!

Copyright

All material in the Sirius Wiki is copyright 2010 by Sirius Software, Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The material is provided here as reference material for our clients, for users of Model 204 and for educational purposes in the technical community.

References

The Sirius Homepage: http://sirius-software.com
Mediawiki: http://www.mediawiki.org
Wikitaxi: http://www.wikitaxi.org
Wikimedia XML dump importing: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Importing_XML_dumps
Mediawiki XML dump format: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Export
Wikipedia's information page on using XML database dumps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download