Data Crow
Data Crow allows you use the standard movie & video (divx, xvid, DVD, Blu-ray, etc), book (and eBooks), images, games & software, music (mp3 and other music files) cataloging modules. Beside these modules (which you can change to fit your requirements) you can create new modules (want to catalogue your stamps, equipment, or anything else?). The GUI is skinnable.

Data Crow allows you find information on your items through services such as Amazon, Imdb.com, Sourceforge.net, Softpedia, Ofdb, MusicBrainz and many others.
Reporting (based on XLST stylesheets and graphs), loan administration, item importing & exporting, backup & restore, web service and many other optional features are waiting for you.

A short list of features:
  • Cataloguing of media and anything else
  • Loan Management
  • Flexible on all fronts; allows you to add/remove/hide fields, design your own forms, skinnable, create your own modules (wizard based), etcetera
  • Online services to retrieve the information on your items (imdb.com, amazon.com and many more)
  • File parsing (divx, mp3, flac, pdf, jpeg, etc.)
  • Full feature desktop GUI and a light weight web server + GUI
  • Mass item processing (online update + file parsing)
  • Internal help system
  • Advanced user management
  • Advanced filters (which can be saved for later)
  • Out of the box Data Crow catalogs books, movies, audio (CDs and/or files), images and software BUT can catalogue anything else as well

System requirements
  • Minimum JRE: 1.6.0_27
  • Graphics card with minimum resolution of 1024x768.
  • Program uses 256Mb RAM

Data Crow on an eComStation machine with Open JDK

Installing Data Crow
Download datacrow_4_0_1_installer.zip. Create a folder (directory) "datacrow". Copy the "installer.jar" file to the new folder "datacrow". Use the installation command file "install.cmd" from the download below to install the program. The contents of install.cmd are;
@echo off
set path=[drive: java]\JAVA160ga5\bin
set BEGINLIBPATH=[drive: java]\JAVA160ga5\bin
[drive: datacrow]
cd [drive: datacrow]\datacrow
java -jar installer.jar 2>installerbugs.txt
I use 2 separate folders (directories), one for Java and one for Data Crow with the files created by this program. The references used in the cmd file;

  • [drive: java] = drive with Java
  • [drive: datacrow] = drive with Data Crow

should be replaced with real drive letters. Save the file "install.cmd". This file is copied to the "datacrow" folder (directory). Furthermore, different paths?, adjust according to your needs. If you start the installation, you can answer all questions in the normal way except the one on the last screen. The program has no understanding of our desktop, so creating automatically seems not sensible.

The datacrow.cmd file
Data Crow version 4.0.1 works with Open JDK in OS/2-eCS. Higher versions need Java 7 or better. I have made a datacrow.cmd file with the following contents; 
@echo off
set path=[drive: java]\JAVA160ga5\bin
set BEGINLIBPATH=[drive: java]\JAVA160ga5\bin
[drive: datacrow]
cd [drive: datacrow]\datacrow
java -Xmx256m -jar datacrow.jar 2>datacrowbugs.txt
I use 2 separate folders (directories), one for Java and one for Data Crow with the files created by this program. The references used in the cmd file;

  • [drive: java] = drive with Java
  • [drive: datacrow] = drive with Data Crow

should be replaced with real drive letters. Edit and save the file "datacrow.cmd" from the distribution. This file is copied to the "Data Crow" folder (directory). Furthermore, different paths?, adjust according to your needs.
Create a new program object. Specify the path and file name: "[drive: datacrow]\datacrow\datacrow.cmd". In the tabpage Session check the boxes "OS/2 window", "Running as an icon" and "Close Window to end program". In the tabpage General you can enter the name "Data Crow 4.0.1".

Parameters / options explained
  • The addition "2>datacrowbugs.txt" ensures that errors are saved in the file "datacrowbugs.txt". The 2 in "2>" is not a typo!
  • The specification "-Xmx256m" comes from the installation instruction in "[drive: datacrow]\datacrow\readme\readme.txt". The "-Xmx256m" indicates the maximum limit.

First time run
When you start the application for the first time you need to give a drive and directory where Data Crow can save its files with your data. When that's done the program starts and will exit hard with the error SYS1808 with exeption-code 0005. This has probably to do that it want to write some kind of log file. Its seen with more programs at first start. Restart Data Crow and you find that all is working as it should. There is an incompatibility between Oracle and OpenJDK which has to do with images. PNG images are read and saved in the database, all others are ignored. All pictures stored in the copy/paste buffer can be added into Data Crow, in short, open the picture in PMView Pro and copy it. Go to Data Crow and use the option "Add from memory". If you peak into the database data you can find your images as JPG images. There are some manuals available on www.datacrow.net. On 23 August 2017 - Data Crow 4.2.2 has been released, on 2 April 2018 the message - Data Crow - the end. With version 4.0.1 we're not far behind. Update: 24 January 2019 - Data Crow website has moved to its new home in Canada, so development is going on!

Download
In the file you can find the above command files (all drive letters are on set to C:) and an OS/2 Data Crow icon: datacrow-ecs.zip.

revision August 2, 2019