[aprssig] Screen Scraping of findU

[Gregg Wonderly]

AE5PL Lists wrote:
> As a side note, javAPRSDB is an adjunct to javAPRSSrvr (both free to
> licensed amateurs) which populates a "last heard" SQL table, a track
> table, a weather table, and a "all packets" table (optional) using
> generic (tested with mySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, and others) JDBC.
> Gregg, if you are interested in using it to populate your own database,
> feel free to contact me directly at pete at ae5pl.net

Thanks for the offer Pete.  I'm not sure that I'm headed in that direction yet. 
  I haven't heard enough from users about their expectations for long term 
information to know that I need more than incore history as provided from the 
current APRS-IS interface.  Many people are looking for a simple way to say "I 
want to watch station x, y and z" and providing the KML server for use with 
google earth seems to be an easy way to do that.  If I allow them to specify 
which station prefixes they are interested in and use the "p/" filter to list 
those prefixes, I can get just that data.

If they are interested in a larger group of stations, they can use a different 
format filter such as the "r/" filter.

The prefix filter works fine for most cases, but it does have some issues for 
common call prefixes with none SSID qualified stations.

If you have KD5WX and KD5WXF stations both active, and not using an SSID, then 
you can't use the prefix filter to get just KD5WX.  You'll also see KD5WXF.  The 
main point of this is that with the filter in place, you can double click on the 
network link and google earth will zoom to a level to contain only the stations 
reporting on that link.  So, if there are extra stations, you might get a 
different view than you really one from doing that, and have to resume your self.

If I get some requests for a longer term display/history, I will get in touch 
with you to see about using your database server's tables for historical reference.

73

Gregg Wonderly
W5GGW