Emdros

Emdros is an Open-Source text database engine for storage and retrieval of analyzed or annotated text.

Emdros has a powerful query-language for asking relevant questions of the data.

Emdros has wide applicability in fields that deal with analyzed or annotated text. Application domains include linguistics, publishing, text processing, and any other fields that deal with annotated text.

Emdros provides a conceptual model of text which can be quite liberating to use once it has been grasped.

Meta-data may also be stored, so long as there is some textual element with which it can be associated.

Emdros is good both for corpus linguistics (large amounts of text) and for field-linguistics (smaller amounts of data).

Fixed corpora, such as Biblical texts, are good candidates for making Emdros useful. Emdros is currently being used for large databases of the Hebrew Bible.

Dictionaries are also a target possibility. Emdros supports structuring of text documents down to minute details, while not losing the big picture.

Emdros embodies a particular model of text called the EMdF model. The primary advantage over XML's data model is that object types (such as pages and chapters) need not be hierarchically structured or embedded, but may overlap. In addition, objects (such as a clause or a phrase) need not be contiguous, but may have gaps.

Emdros can output its results in XML. The XML carries its own standalone DTD and validates with a validating parser.

Emdros architecture

Emdros fits into a software architecture as follows:

+---------------+
| Client | User-written
+---------------+
|
+---------------+
| MQL | Emdros
+---------------+
|
+---------------+
| EMdF | Emdros
+---------------+
|
+---------------+
| DB | PostgreSQL or MySQL
+---------------+

At the top, there is a client which you, the user, must write. This client will take advantage of Emdros's services to provide for the needs of your particlar database domain.

Then come the two Emdros-layers: The MQL layer and the EMdF layer. The MQL layer provides an interface to the MQL language. The MQL layer automatically takes advantage of the EMdF layer, which translates the MQL queries into SQL calls to the underlying database.

The underlying database takes care of storing the data, and retrieving it as directed by the EMdF layer.

The data domain which Emdros handles is that of text. Emdros provides a certain abstraction of text that makes it ideally suited to storing and retrieving annotated text, such as linguistic analyses of a text.

These analyses can be, e.g., syntactic analyses, morphological analyses, or discourse analyses, or all of these. Phonological analyses are also supported to some extent.

Emdros is particularly useful in domains where research questions need to be asked of databases of annotated text. This would include dictionary-making, Biblical language-research (Greek or Hebrew), other linguistic research, and research on annotated text in general.

Emdros has a particular model of text called the EMdF model. Users have attested, and our experience shows, that the EMdF model can be quite liberating when dealing with text as a programmer or program designer. Thus any application that deals with annotated text will likely benefit from the Emdros and the EMdF model.

Features:

• Linguistic analyses are the primary target domain. This includes all levels of analysis, such as morphology, syntax, and discourse analysis, and even phonology to some extent.
• Publishing is also a field where Emdros can be useful. Emdros supports breaking a text down into pages, chapters, paragraphs, etc.
• Text processing may benefit from Emdros if the problem involves annotating the text.

What is new in this release:

• Experimental support for full text search was added.
• The RenderObjects and RenderXML features were enhanced.
• General speed improvements were obtained.
• Support was added for building on recent Linux distributions, as well as support for building with qmake.

What is new in version 3.2.0:

• Upgraded to SQLite 3.6.17 and PCRE 8.01.
• The TIGERXML importer is now more lenient towards the input.
• The Emdros Query Tool can now output in XML format, and can create PNGs from the command line.

What is new in version 3.1.0:

• Bug fixes:
• The long-standing bug, #1217003 on SourceForge.Net's Emdros bug tracker, has been fixed. Basically, there was a design error in the way object references were handled in topographic MQL. This could sometimes lead to misleading and/or incomplete results.
• Bug #2021303 has been fixed. It said that in the Emdros Query Tool, setting "option = quiet" in the config file would entail that one had to resize the window to get any output displayed at all.
• Feature enhancements:
• The Emdros Query Tool is now able to save its output to HTML. When the output contains trees, they are saved as PNGs.
• Added libharvest, which is a library for "harvesting" Emdros objects.
• Added a JSON parser, used in libharvest.
• The Emdros Query Tool now doesn't display any tool tips, which users wanted turned off.
• Object reference usages can now reference its own block. For example, this is now possible: [Word as w1 // Note how this references the same object for both features. phrase_dependent_part_of_speech = w1.part_of_speech ]
• On Linux desktops, menu entries are added for the Emdros Query Tool, the Emdros Chunking Tool, and the Emdros Import Tool.
• The Emdros Query Tool and the Emdros Chunking Tool are both significantly faster at displaying results.
• The Emdros Query Tool is now able to display horizontal trees in its output.
• The Emdros Query Tool is now able to output results as a KWIC concordance (KWIC = Keywords In Context).
• MatchedObject::getFeatureAsString() now returns a list of enum labels rather than a list of integers when the feature is a list of enums.
• The speed of GET OBJECTS HAVING MONADS IN has been improved.
• The TigerXML importer now is able to import *.ltcx files from Linguistic Tree Constructor.
• Build changes:
• gcc 4.3 is now supported.
• PostgreSQL version 8.3 is now the only supported version, on all platforms.
• Emdros can now be rpm-built on 64-bit Fedora 10.
• Emdros can now be built on x86 Solaris.
• RPMs now get the distribution identifier (e.g., fc9) in the RPM name automatically.
• Python SWIG DLL on Win32 is now called _Emdros.pyd rather than _Emdros.dll.
• On Mac OS X, both 10.4 and 10.5 are supported by the same binaries.
• wxWidgets 2.4 is no longer supported; only 2.6 and 2.8 are.
• On Mac OS X and Linux/Unix, non-Unicode builds of Emdros are no longer supported.
• SWIG csharp is now able to use GMCS for .Net bindings.