Search Engines

Much internet data retrival is carried out by means of search engines which provide an effective way of displaying data in a predetermined, structured way. Search engines can be both complex, i.e. querying into several databases in a relational structure and simple, querying into just a single table.

Several of the tables below are examples of a simple search engine with varying degrees of query functionality, the first, Muslimske fornavne i Danmark, having the possibility of a full or partial search, whereas the others, e.g. the UNGEGN list of Toponymic Terminology, has additional 'Begins with', 'Ends on' search functions. The Danmarks Stednavne search engine is the first view of the electronic version of the series Danmarks Stednavne in completely unmodified form, i.e. with 'warts and all'. The German-language Müllers Großes Deutsches Ortsbuch 2012 is an example of how to deploy a search functionality to a web-book, in this case a Google Books publication.

• Muslimske fornavne i Danmark: A dataset from Eva Villarsen Meldgaard's dictionary of Muslim first names in Denmark from 2005, fed into a mysql-database and made searchable by means of a php-form.

• UNGEGN list of Toponymic Terminology: A modified dataset of UNGEGN's (United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names) mulitlingual list of toponymic terms for use by map makers and onomasts. The searchable dataset can be viewed in three of the six UN languages. Again the basis is a mysql-database connected to a php-form.

• Danmarks Stednavne: 25 volumes of the Danish place-names series Danmarks Stednavne (The Place-Names of Denmark), all The digitised and parsed into XML and made available by means of a search form in .aspx format. This is the unedited dataset in the first version of the search engine. Thus, there are some mistakes which will be sorted along the way. PS: Opens in a new window.

• Ortnamnen i Göteborg och Bohuslän: A dynamically generated searchable index of the County volumes for Göteborg and Bohuslän of Sveriges Ortnamn. The index hasin excess of 111,500 entries, many of which have several page references. as with the other examples here, the basis is a mysql-database connected to a php-form.
  
  
  

• Müllers Großes Deutsches Ortsbuch 2012. A comprehensive index of German place-names with identification of appropriate authorities and jurisdictions. The book contains some 137,000 place names, not only including independent towns and municipalities but also over 100,000 otherwise undocumented small and very small villages, settlements, small settlement areas, farms, hamlets, etc. The book is generated as an Google Books embedding facility.

• An Icelandic-English Dictionary: Cleasby and Vigfússon's dictionary is not strictly about place-names but a central resource for name researchers into place-names of Scandinavian orgin all the same. Originally published in 1874, this searchable dictionary was digitised by Sean Crist in 2003-04. He has very kindly allowed the Hjaltland Network to experiment with the dataset. The basis is a mysql-database connected to a php-form.

MySQL

Open source, and the world's most used, relational database manage-ment system (RDB-MS). It runs as a (web)server provid-ing multi-user ac-cess to databases. SQL stands for 'Structured Query Language'.

PHP

An open source scripting language designed to produce dynamic Webpages to be embedded into an HTML source document. Ultimate-ly, the script is interpreted by a Webserver with a PHP processor mo-dule which generates the resulting Web page.