Saberizing a Mac, revisited

by Josh Garoon on Jul 13, 2010 1:08 AM EDT

Up front: Apologies if somehow I've overlooked any discussions that followed the four-part series from a year or so ago. I've done some digging, but couldn't find answers to my questions, and so I'm bringing them to y'all in hope of some guidance.

I've had no problem installing MAMP and Sequel Pro, and loading the Lahman BDB. I'm looking forward to learning some SQL and running some queries. My next step, though, in an ideal world, would be to also get a Retrosheet database up and running using Chadwick. I've downloaded the latter, and after some frustration with Snow Leopard, I think I have it working.*

*I think. I had to completely uninstall, download, and reinstall the latest version of Xcode tools to get gcc (the C compiler) to work; this seems to be an issue with Snow Leopard that others might have to deal with, as well, but I don't have the technical knowledge to say much more than that. And as you'll see below, I'm not exactly sure what to do next, so I haven't really tested my compile of Chadwick yet.

Here's the thing: I'm not a programmer, and despite the much-appreciated efforts of tangotiger and Colin Wyers to document the process from the Windows side, I'm not sure what to do from here. I could probably try to do what I want to do using their instructions, file structures, programs, batch files, etc. with VMWare Fusion and Windows 7, but part of the fun here is to figure out how to do this on the Mac, right? And before I start madly downloading Retrosheet .zip files left and right, I'd like to have some sense of how to get them properly parsed.

So: anyone feeling like helping out a lost soul? Thanks in advance...

Tweet Comment 5 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

I would just go to this website and download retrosheet from there

http://www.wantlinux.net/2009/04/retrosheet-baseball-mysql-database-download/

You don’t have to futz around with the chadwick or parsing stuff, just import it into SQL. There is also a Pitch f/x database for download on that website.

by vivaelpujols on Jul 13, 2010 1:56 PM EDT reply actions

Thanks very much.

Great resource. When I checked that site last night, for some reason I thought it hadn’t been updated since Retrosheet’s November 21 changes. Would’ve been quicker, though I suppose now I can rest easy knowing I have a working C compiler.

Still: if anyone has any tips on using Chadwick on the Mac, I’d still love to see them… it’d be nice to know how to make it all work.

"Basically, tRA is FIP having a nightmare." ~ Matt Swartz

by Josh Garoon on Jul 13, 2010 2:17 PM EDT up reply actions

(Also, it would be nice to be able to update my Retrosheet database myself from here on out...)

"Basically, tRA is FIP having a nightmare." ~ Matt Swartz

by Josh Garoon on Jul 13, 2010 7:00 PM EDT up reply actions

Mac database, up and running

I wanted to use the Perl scripts Mike Fast wrote about in his blog to process the MLB XML files and get them into a MySQL database. I had some problems using MAMP on my Mac. After researching, I found it was because MAMP and the Perl MySQL drivers weren’t exactly compatible. I could have recompiled things, but I’m still pretty new to the Unix underpinnings of Mac OS X (10.5.7) and I didn’t want to fry my MacBook.

What I ended up doing was installing MySQL, then the Perl DBI and DBD modules to connect to it. The MySQL install went okay, but I had to add the database administrator, phpMyAdmin, on top to use it. This link was pretty helpful getting everything set up.

Getting DBI and DBD modules installed was another story. Apparently, on the Mac, the Perl installs from CPAN don’t “make” right, so you have to download the modules and do it manually, which require patience and a fairly good knowledge of your system file structure. After a few late nights, I got it working, but, I have to admit, I googled everywhere to get tidbits of info to make progress to that end. I didn’t discover or create anything new; it’s all out there.

I documented what I did in case I ever needed to do it again, which I did when I upgraded to 10.5.8. I’d be glad to help someone else through the process if my experiences can be of use.

by mark.d.mccluskey on Jul 13, 2010 9:12 PM EDT reply actions