Lab: Building Daycart Databases -- WITH HINTS AND ANSWERS

This set of labs guides the user through building a Daycart database using the VCS (Virtual Chemical Stores) contrib tools.

Setup:

1. Get the VCS scripts and data. They are available on the "mugserver" via ftp. The filenames are vcs_scripts.tgz and vcs_suppliers.tgz. They are tarred gzip files. Unzip and untar them.

2. First, within SQLPlus, populate the salts and transform tables using the example file: vcs_scripts/normal_vcs.sql.

3. Test the populated salts and transform tables.

   Use vcs_desalt() and vcs_normalize() with appropriate test structures based on the rules in normal_vcs.sql.

   Try:

   select vcs_desalt('NCC.[Na+]', 0, 0) from dual;
   select vcs_normalize('ON(=O)C', 0, 0) from dual;
   

4. Create the empty VCS schema tables using vcs_scripts/create_vcs.sql.

5. Follow the further instructions in John Bradshaw's VCS presentation. There are both "Quick Start" and "Detailed" usage instructions in this document. This document walks through the steps of converting data and populating the database and also includes some example searches that can be performed.