REFDB(7)

NAME
RefDB - a set of tools to manage bibliographic references, notes, and bibliographies for markup languages

DESCRIPTION

  General Features

    • RefDB is a reference/notes database and bibliography tool for SGML, XML, and LaTeX documents.

    • RefDB is mainly implemented in C, with a few Perl scripts inbetween, as well as shell scripts as "glue". It can be compiled on all platforms with a decent C compiler (a small amount of porting may be required). It builds and runs out of the box on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, OSX, Darwin, and Windows/Cygwin.

    • RefDB is modular and accessible. You can plug in a variety of database engines to store your data, and you can choose between a variety of interfaces for interactive work. You can use RefDB in your projects through shell scripts or from Perl programs.

    • The RefDB handbook (more than 300 printed pages) helps you to get RefDB up and running quickly and explains how to use the software for both administrators and users in great detail. In addition there is a tutorial targeted at plain users.

  Application Design

    • RefDB uses a SQL database engine to store the references, notes, and the bibliography styles. Choose either an external database server for optimum performance and flexibility, or an embedded database engine for convenience (see below for supported database engines).

    • Both reference and bibliography style databases use the relational features of SQL databases extensively to consolidate information and to save storage space.

    • RefDB employs a three-tier architecture with lots of flexibility: clients, an application server that can run as a daemon, and the database server. If you prefer the embedded SQL engine, there'll be a two-tier setup. In both cases, all tiers may run on a single workstation for individual use.

    • The application server can generate log messages to monitor its operation.

    • RefDB contains two standard interfaces: a command line interface for terminal addicts and for use in scripts, and a PHP-based web interface for a more visual approach. In addition, both Emacs and Vim users can access RefDB from the editing environment they're used to. Finally, there is also a Perl client module to integrate RefDB functionality into your own Perl programs.

  Reference and Notes Management

    • The main input format for bibliographic data is RIS which can be generated and imported by all major reference databases on Windows (Reference Manager, EndNote and the like). An XML representation of RIS using the risx DTD is also supported as a native format. The latter is well suited as a means to import SGML or XML bibliographic data.

    • Import filters are provided for Medline (tagged and XML), BibTeX, MARC, and DocBook.

    • The data can be retrieved as simple text, formatted as HTML, formatted as a DocBook bibliography element (SGML or XML), formatted as a TEI listBibl element (XML), formatted as MODS (XML), formatted as BibTeX reference list, or formatted as RIS or risx files.

    • All character encodings supported by your platform can be used both for data input and for data export. This includes European character sets like Latin-1 and of course Unicode.

    • Extended notes can be linked to one or more references, authors, periodicals, or keywords to create topics or material collections. These are more powerful and flexible than folder systems and the like.

    • The query language is fairly simple yet powerful. You can use booleans to combine queries on any combination of fields. You can use brackets to group queries. You can use Unix-style regular expressions to formulate advanced queries.

  Bibliographies

    • Formatted bibliographies can be created automatically from DocBook SGML/XML and TEI XML documents. This does not require any changes or extensions to the DTDs. RefDB can also be integrated as a data source into the LaTeX/BibTeX workflow.

    • RefDB is extensible in terms of the supported document types: support for new document types can be added without hacking the tool itself (you only need to hack stylesheets)

    • Citation and reference styles can be defined in XML to match the weirdest requirements of journals and publishers.

    • Sophisticated shell scripts and makefiles take care of the document transformations. The whole process is transparent to the user as all he needs to do is e.g. type make pdf to turn his document into a PDF file with formatted citations and bibliographies.

  Networking Capabilities

    • Due to the client/server design, RefDB is very well suited as a shared reference database for a workgroup or a department. However, it runs just fine on a single standalone workstation.

    • Users can share databases and still have their personal reference lists. They can share their notes or keep them private on a per-note base.

    • Concurrent read and write access of several users is supported. There is no need to restrict access of other users to read-only. However, if your database engine supports access control (MySQL and PostgreSQL), you can restrict access of some users to read-only.

    • A simple method to access electronic offprints (e.g. in PDF or PostScript format) is provided in the HTML output and in the web interface. This also works across networks using mounted shares.

  Supported Database Servers

RefDB versions 0.9 and later employ the libdbi database abstraction library to provide support for different SQL database engines. Currently the following external SQL database servers are supported:

    • MySQL

    • PostgreSQL

The following embedded database engines are supported:

    • SQLite (versions 2.x and 3.x)

SEE ALSO

refdbd (1), refdba (1), refdbc (1), refdbbib (1), bib2ris (1), db2ris (1), en2ris (1), marc2ris (1), med2ris (1), eenc (1), refdb-backup (1), refdb-ms (1), refdb-restore (1), refdbjade (1), refdbnd (1), refdbxml (1), refdbctl (1), refdb (8).

RefDB manual (local copy) PREFIX/share/doc/refdb-<version>/refdb-manual/index.html

RefDB manual (web) <http://refdb.sourceforge.net/manual/index.html>

RefDB on the web <http://refdb.sourceforge.net/>

AUTHOR

RefDB was originally written by Markus Hoenicka <markus@mhoenicka.de>. For a list of current authors, see the file AUTHORS.