Author: | Simon Wiles, DDBC |
---|---|
Contact: | digital_archives@ddbc.edu.tw |
Web site: | http://authority.ddbc.edu.tw/ |
Date: | October, 2010 |
Contents
This archive contains the current snapshot of the DDBC Time Authority database, as of October, 2010, including full data for the Chinese, Japanese and Korean Dynastic calendars.
The calendar data has been assembled by the Library and Information Center of Dharma Drum Buddhist College 法鼓佛教學院 (http://www.ddbc.edu.tw/) between 2008 and 2010. The Japanese data builds upon data provided by Takashi SUGA.
This database is part of the Buddhist Authority Database Project, hosted at DDBC (http://authority.ddbc.edu.tw/).
For the latest snapshot, and for more information and downloads, visit http://authority.ddbc.edu.tw/docs/open_content/.
The data is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. See COPYING.txt for the complete license.
The archive contains the following files:
The SQL dump itself, complete with all internal schema information and relations properly arranged.
This document, which is in reStructuredText format
Database schematic documentation, detailing table and field structure, and internal relations.
Database schematic in the form of a Scalar Vector Graphics file, created using Dia.
Complete license information.
Documentation for the Database in XHTML format, generated from the reStructuredText files.
The SQL import file contained in this archive was produced from a MySQL 5.x series database. The Foreign Key constraints and relations that are part of the schema require the InnoDB transactional storage engine, which is part of most default MySQL installs, and will be the default storage engine in MySQL from version 5.5 onwards. At present we advise this environment for depolying the Buddhist Authority Database data, although a migration to PostgreSQL is a possibility at some point. However, it should be possible to convert the schema into other formats. If you have success with this, or require any assistance, please contact us.
For a full description of the Database and it's relations, see SCHEMA.txt.
Prolepsis, in this context, is the use of a dating system to cover events which do not occur during its legitimate time-frame. In this way the proleptic Gregorian or proleptic Julian calendars can be used to refer to dates before the existence of these calendars themselves.
In the context of the Chinese calendar, this phenomenon is commonly manifest in two kinds of circumstances:
To be able to cope with this, our database contains records which cover, where appropriate, a range of dates before and/or after the actual historical period spanned by a given era, emperor or dynasty. A result of this is that the extents of these periods as reported by the database will be inaccurate in some cases.
We have therefore introduced into our database a status field, which allows us to record that the period covered by the record in question is merely hypothetical, or 'proleptic'. This is indicated by a 'P' in this field. In addition, a start_from field has been added to facilitate the recording of lunar months which straddle a change in status: such a lunar month is represented in the database by two records, where the latter has a start_from value indicating the day on which it becomes valid. Please note, however, that the research required to accurately and exhaustively populate these fields has yet to be completed, and as a result the beginning and ending dates reported by the database for particular reigns should not be taken as authoratative.
The DDBC Time Authority Database has certain limitations.