RE: TASS Database, remote access and ODBC

["Gutzwiller, Michael" <mgutzwiller@lanvision.com>]

Chris wrote,

	Mike,

	Could you tell us a little about what you are doing?  A couple
reasons I
	ask (1) Just curious, (2) I am making some changes to the
database design
	that could break other people's code.

I'm currently working on two items related to TASS.

First I'm updating the star program to do the following:
1)	allow you to adjust the search algorithm if your clock was
wrong,
2)	output the magnitude adjustment for each star so that PostFlat
(see below) program has a place to put its data,
3)	output a "shape" parameter that indicates how closely the object
looked like the PSF
4)	add some other minor improvements

Items 2 and 3 will change the format of the star lists which will have
some impact on the database import algorithm.

Secondly I'm working on the PostFlat program which will take a night's
star lists and calculate a correction to the magnitudes based on
declination.  This essentially corrects for a poor flat vector that
shows slopes.

What does this have to do with database access?  Not much.  I actually
needed to develop some database access programs here at work using an
ODBC driver.  Just for the heck of it I tried to tie into the TASS
database as part of my learning curve and the rest is history.

The more I think about it though the more I believe the PostFlat program
could benefit if it could process star lists already in the database
which would make ODBC access in PostFlat a good idea.

I've really been swamped with other duties for the last couple of months
but I'm freeing up now so I'll have more time to push the work through.

Mike G.