Presentation given at the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Orgeldokumentation (IAOD), HSLU, Luzern, Switzerland, 2012.

1. Brainstorming on Web technologies
and the pipeorgan DB
Achille Peternier

2. Towards a FP7
• A new international platform for all
– Lesson learned from previous (national)
experiences
– Consensus
– Using modern technologies
• Definition of standards
– Categorizing instruments
– Storing the information

3. Towards a FP7
Historical aspects IT support
- How to access/store/modify data
- How to present the content

4. Standards
• Create a group of experts to define a universal
categorization standard for pipeorgans
– The world is full of standards: ISO, JPEG, PDF, etc.
• What information to collect and how?
• How robust it is?
– Test the standard against worst-cases

5. Standards
• A standard allows us to:
– Easily share data and concepts
• Organ builders and software designers working under the
same roof
– Automatic data processing:
• Define a file format
• Build compatible DBs
• Build adapters to export/import to/from the standard
– Future generations will complain and improve the
standard (iteration) 
• Make it extendable

6. Towards a FP7

7. Timeline

8. Timeline

9. Timeline
• A location
• A series of events
– Deltas over the previous state
• F(location, date) = sum(all events)
– Add, sub, migrate, destroy, …

10. Timeline
St. Martin
Mendrisio, CH
1523 1630 1712 1890 Today

11. Timeline
St. Martin 1911
1771
Mendrisio, CH
1523 1630 Moved to:
City Museum
Zug, CH
1712 1890 Today

12. Timeline
City Museum
Zug, CH
1900 1911 1990
From: Modified:
St. Martin Mean-tone
Mendrisio, CH temperament

13. Idea
• …a different approach?

14. How to?

15. How to?
• Two static elements:
– Location
• Churches, organ builders’ workshops, concert halls, private houses,
etc.
– Time
• A specific moment
• Two dynamic elements:
– Bricks
• Can be anything: a stop, a kind of keyboard, a kind of temperament,
an organ body, a location within the church, etc.
• Are stored in a tree
– Actions
• Are the glue among atoms, locations and time.
• Can be add, remove, relocate, modify, destroy, etc.

16. How to?
Location: Action: Atom:
St. Martin
Organ
Mendrisio, CH Add (1st Oct. 1771)

17. How to?
Organ
Organ
Organ

19. How to?
St. Martin
61 keys Mendrisio, CH
Short Organ
Keyboard Organ body Entrance Organ body
Positiv
Hauptwerk
Mechanic Electric
Meantone
Equal
Principal Regal
Flute
Metal Keyboard
Wood Metal Wood
Octave Short
49 keys
Metal

20. How to?
Organ
Organ body Organ body
Hauptwerk Positiv
Regal
Principal
Flute
Metal Metal Wood
Wood

21. How to?
St. Martin
Mendrisio, CH
Organ Organ
Organ
Choir Transept
Mobile

22. How to?
St. Martin
Mendrisio, CH
Organ
Organ body Keyboard
Hauptwerk
Short 61 keys
Principal Regal

23. How to?
St. Martin
Mendrisio, CH
Organ
Organ body Keyboard
Hauptwerk
Short 61 keys
Principal Regal

24. How to?
Organ
Organ body Organ body
Hauptwerk Positiv
Regal
Principal
Flute
Metal Metal Wood
Wood

25. Ivory Ebony
Diatonic Chromatic How to?
Short 50 keys Organ
Pression
Keyboard Organ body Organ body
Pression
Hauptwerk Positiv
Regal
Principal
Flute
Metal Metal Wood
Wood
Lead 20% Tin 80% Walnut

26. How to?
Before: Action: After:
Organ body Organ body
remove
Regal
Meantone modify Equal
St. Martin Museum relocate St. Martin Museum
Organ Organ

27. How to?
• By hand? No way!

28. How to?
• IT support:
– On data acquisition:
• Wizards, GUIs
– On data validation:
• Automatic error detection
– On data visualization:
• Optimize view according to the content
– Zoom, timebar, multimedia content, etc.
– On data processing:
• AI

30. Geolocalization
• Adding
GPS coords :
– Can be inferred from street/building names
– Visualization over a map
City
Museum
Positiv

31. Geolocalization
• Adding
GPS coords :
– Geographical-based queries
• Where is the closest meantone instrument to my
home?
– Regional statistics
• What is the density of Regal in the Paris area?

32. WWW
• Web-oriented infrastructure
– à la Wikipedia
• Different user levels (from visitors to content providers)
– A single application for everything
• No need for MS-Access
– Typical Wiki-like content:
• History of the building, stop descriptions, famous
organists who played, etc.

33. WWW
• Distributed infrastructure
– One server per country
– Synching data overnight
• Backup
• Performance

34. Extra features
• Web-site to brochure

35. Extra features
• 2D barcodes

36. Extra features
• Mobile app
– GPS
– Organ as tags

37. Extra features
• Mobile support for data gathering
– Simplified data input
• Multimedia
• GPS coords
• Following a protocol
• Automatic verification
– Corollary tools
• Temperament recognizer?

38. Thanks!