Directing your browser to www.israelidances.com, you enter Aura's home page and you see the banner, Israelidances.com. At the top is a menu system that displays various sub options as your mouse is hovers over it. To the ]d you can see that we have positioned our mouse cursor over "our sites" and a secondary menu shows the various other web sites that Aura administers. We might add that there is plenty of information on all these sites, but let's show you one of our favorites, Hebrewsongs.com, which we get to by clicking "our sites" and then hebrew songs. In our example to the ]d, boxes indicate where we have clicked and the line indicates the flow. What we will see has been consolidated into the image below and this shows the web site, hebrewsongs.com, up and running

We will see Hebrewsongs.com again as we deal with what most users would call the Aussie database. Aura has linked all this information together as you search for songs and dances. In the web site, Hebrewsongs.com, pictured to the ]d, if we were to go further and click the control designated as songs and then All songs A-Z, we would get to a list of israeli dance music in alphabetic order and by clicking the song title, we would see an English translation of the lyrics. {TDC note: This web site has used these translations, with citation of the source, in both the Adam Baum and John Frank scripts on introductory Israeli dancing.} For this tutorial, however, we are more intent on providing a tutorial on the origonal website, Israelidances.com and we will return to that for the rest of this script.

Once back on Israelidances.com, we will concentrate on classes, dances and events and how we access these components through Aura's home page on Israelidances.com. Let's give a practical example where we can begin to use Aura's web site. Let's assume that the Toronto IsReal Dance Festival looks like a possibility this year. You always have the option to search for web sites associated with the Toronto festival which takes place around our Independence day holiday weekend. A google search will move you onto www.israelidancetoronto.com very quickly. But what if you wanted to see all the Israeli dance festivals available in that time period from Late June into middle July. Toronto's web site is not going to provide that information. Aura's can as she keeps track of all the Israeli dance festivals around the world. By clicking on Dance Events (as of the time this was being written, this would be through Events/Dance Events as shown to the ]d, but the site has been changing its menu designations recently so try to be flexible as you follow this) and working your way down to the time period of interest, you would see what is scheduled for that time period world wide. To the ]d we show this. The wavy lines eliminate the events the events not discussed here but you would see them. It gives us a view of that time period and notice there is an event in Israel around that time period which you might also be interested.

Aura has added another feature she is very proud of and you can become a part of this project. By clicking dances and then moving to favorite dances, you can indicate to her system your favorite dances for all the world to see. What will happen is that you will enter the dances as a temporary user and, when confirmed, be issued a permanent password so you can make changes on an on-going basis. The dances for selection are part of her Israeli dance database (the aforementioned aussie database) to be discussed later in this script. For whatever the purposes, we have been asked to indicate the favorite dances of Aaron Rosenberg as you can see to the ]d {TDC Note: this allows us to plug our coverage of Aaron and Sharon's Nov 20th,2010 oldies session in Cinnaminson. In addition, we expect a script will shortly be created detailing Aaron and Sharon's recent March 19th,2011 event. Further, we should point out that this site is covering the popularity of Israeli dances in a different way by displaying session playlists which you can link to by clicking here.}

Aura's web site and databases keep track of all Israeli dance classes worldwide. To the ]d, we example the Philadelphia area with several composited screens. We see the current status of several of the classes covered by this web site. Now, we do want to indicate two things to you. Aura is after accuracy and welcomes notices of change. This individual contacted her pertaining to several change that were occurring during the last year and changes to her web site were effected. There is no standing on ceremony here: if a change is necessary to keep her web site accurate, she will do it. We do not believe we are misrepresenting her when we say her mantra is "accuracy, accuracy, accuracy" pertaining to this information. But we also must indicate that on a world wide level it's tough to keep track of local snow storms or instructor health and how they affect that day's classes and in cases like this a local web site, such as this one, has an advantage in providing real time and explicit information on whether a class has been cancelled at the last minute. Anyway, to the ]d you see a composite of Philadelphia's schedule of Israeli dancing with an added emphasis on Germantown's class

We have been indicating movement along Aura's web site through the use of the upper menu selections. The web site has a lower link list which can be used to access many of these same components. Below, we have indicated, by blocks on this lower link list, components of Israelidances.com that we have and/or will discuss in this script and, additionally, invoked the A-Z index for even further drill downs into her web site. We might add that we advised the thediskcoordinator.com in its early development to deal exclusively with link lists as opposed to menus. To the ]d is Aura's version of this and we should add one more comment that the last link shown in A-Z at the bottom of this image - class timetables - World - is another way of accessing what we had been discussing just above, classes around the world.

Now we want to get into what for a lot of dancers is the heart of Aura's web site. Here comes the aussie database. Apparently started in 1996 by Aura and ported to the web sometime around 1998 (or so we are led to believe) most dances are registered (we assume by the choreographer) as to the year the choreography was done, by who, the song name(music title), the musicians (composer, lyricist and singer) and other information. Aura, we assume, finds or in some way translates the lyrics (and these go onto HebrewSongs.com), determines the camps that highlight this dance (and correlates this with the CD/DVD of that camp if applicable) and determines when and where in Australia this dance is performed.]b We've asked some database people about this and everyone concludes that this is a lot of information. However, this is what modern databases do and do well, but nevertheless someone is required to administer, analyze, enter and, if necessary, correct this information and we have Aura to thank for this. And all of this is available to you, the Israeli dancer, at no cost except for your internet connection. {TDC Note: As mentioned before the diskcoordinator web site has been using this database and it is with great pleasure that we give you a tutorial in it. It is also our great pleasure to laud Aura in its creation and maintenance which is no small feat.]bWe can access this database by clicking one of 3 locations on the main menu as indicated here

Clicking any of the controls indicated by the arrows above will take you into the next screen indicated below. Here you can derive information about a dance or song in two ways: One is the advanced portion of the database which we will deal with further below or what we will deal with now: What if you know something about a dance song's name, translated name, choreographer or musician and even year. Keep in mind that we have the English portion of the database and if dealing with names, most of the song names are in foreign languages. Most are in languages that are semite in nature (Hebrew and Arabic) so you get into the queston of transliteration (the practice of converting from one writing system into another) which is not necessarily as consistent as linguists would claim. But we have to start somewhere and to the ]d is this point of entry.

There is a tremendous amount of information that can be gleaned about the database from here. Position your cursor inside the text box. Do not put anything in and hit your enter key (or return key is on an older system). You will get results: In fact you will display the entire database as shown to the ]d. At the time of this writing there were 6730 songs listed and as a default they come out in song name order. This is not the only order you can get this list. We have popped open the sort by box so you can see the possibilities. Keep in mind that computer logic forces blanks to the front so that songs that do not have entries will show up first. For example, sort by year and those songs without an entry for year will appear first and this will happen for all possible options (these header options are designated as fields or columns in database lingo). Additionally, please note that Aura's database displays these results 50 at a time so by dividing 6730 by 50 you will see that there will be a need for 134 full pages and a final page listing 30. Again, while this works in terms of listing all these songs, this is probably not going to get you the info that you seek. You will need to drill down further which we discuss next.

We need to get back to our input. Either, go down below the table or hit the back navigation key. We are about to enter some information which should provide a list smaller than above. Let's assume that we think the letters nir are in the name of the song. Put this into the textbox and click enter. Notice we are now confronting 79 records as shown to the ]d (surely, a great deal less than the 6730 we started with). but many of these song names do not seem to have the letters nir in a consecutive order (assuming they do have an n,i and r in them at all). Keep in mind that entries through this text box we are using are querying the following columns: name, translation, choreographer, year (yes, you could enter a year like 1997 here and it would work), lyricist, composer and singer. Really, you ask? Where is this being passed and why. The answer to the where is that this is a form and this information is passed to a server program. You can see the passing of the data in the browser URL textbox. (on our computer the browser locator textbox shows http://www.israelidances.com/search.asp?SearchThis=nir&S=&ChoreographerName=&intPageNo=1&OrderBy=&Search=Search+the+Database and another program, Search.asp, hidden from you, but indicating that this server is using a Microsoft server operating system, services this request.) In here you will find the answer to your question of why if you hone in on SearchThis=nir. This indicates to the program, Search.asp, to search the database for the letters nis within several already designated fields (or columns). Although you didn't ask, we assume that the How in this is the creation of something called a SQL passthough which when answered by the database using a technology probably called ADO.Net eventually supplies the data found within the database.]bBack to the result that you see. Click any of the titles and you will see additional information about that specific song. So, somewhere in the information presented in the main screen pertaining to the dance or in this additional window screen, the letters nir will appear in sequence. We show this on our screen shot.]bNotice all songs choreographed by Nir Dor show up in this search as Nir's first name is a direct match to our search entry. Look at the second song listed, Al Tid'aq and click the name. The box now visible containing musician information has the name of Nira Gal as the singer. There is where the nir for this song is indicated. We show a composite of this in our screen shot. Also indicated as additional info is how Aura keeps track of CDs and DVDs issued by camps that have taught this song and you can get a feel for what the camp provided by perusing though this info. Further down, we'll show more but we thought we would mention it here, also.

Before we proceed further, there is even more information that you can gather here. Assuming you find the song that you are searching for, the indicator in the audio clip indicates whether you can listen to a portion of it while on Aura's site. Obviously, you need speakers and some software to handle the music download. Most of this music is coming down in a RAM extension which associates it with Real Media, an internet media company that has its hands in many media matters as found on the internet. Of prime importance is a real media player that you can download for free to be able to hear this play selection. This type of file generally will not play in the Windows media player so a download of the real time player is necessary.]bIn addition, a video clip may be indicated also. Keep in mind that an indication of no Video does not mean that a video doesn't exist. But, if it does, you will have to find it on your own. Click Song lyric to give you the English translation of the song and this comes from Hebrewsongs.com, one of Aura's domain names indicated above. We told you that this would cycle around, and now it has.

Still keeping with this simpler search, let's assume that you have a little bit more information. That somewhere in the stores of info that Aura keeps for each song that the letters nir, an unknown number of letters follow but then the letters las appear consecutively. An example of this would be nirkod lasholom. This is known as a compound search and if you were studying database theory, someone would subject you to the study of logical ands and ifs. You may not realize it but you are into a logical and. Aura's database handles this very easily by using a wildcard which is designated as an asterisk. Putting this between the two sets of letters so that the search reads nir*las, you are asking her database to find both a sequence of nir and a sequence of las in some song selection. Understand that the more conditions asked for, the smaller the number of qualifiers that meet your criteria. You could run into the situation that no song meets your request and you would be told this by the database that no results are possible. In this case, we should see a smaller set of possibilities than the 79 we saw when testing against nir alone. To the ]d is a composite showing the result of using nir*las. (one other note:this is not the same as las_nir and the result will not be the same. In las*nir, the database would look for solutions to las and then test all the characters after the las to see if the letters nir was contained. In our case, the 79 previous entries will have the rest of their charaters tested to see if an las exists after the nir)

Let's assume one more thing and then we can move to the more advanced section. Let's assume you think some info on a song has the letters nir. You do not know the next two letter but you think that the letter after that is a d. If you tried nir*d, there would be 58 results most not meeting your criteria. But, you also have through database theory, placeholders designated as underlines _, which allow for any character to be considered. Try nir__d and the 14 matches meet your criteria as shown to the ]d.

We move to the advanced section of searching on Aura's database. The button ignored above, "goto advanced search" is the doorway to this. Click this button to enter this form (this is the technical term on the internet) as shown to the ]d]bNow, this form is made up of controls. Focus first on Dance type. This is made up of two sets of controls:]bRadio buttons, (controls All, Israel and International) can only have one option selected at a time]bCheck boxes that make up the second line of dance type, designated as Circle, Partners, Line, Kids and Mixers. In the case of these check boxes, any one, all, or none can be checked. Checking none of these acts like the All radio button in that every dance type will be shown. Once a check occurs, only those types checked will be used in your search.]bMoving upward, Dance name, Translation and Comments are text boxes and the radio buttons adjoining Dance name, designated as Containing and Beginning With, apply only to the first of these text boxes, Dance name. Below Dance Type, we have 9 combo boxes which have pre selected information already derived from the database with an additional option of all.]bWe should indicate to you, the reader, that there are limitations that this form imposes. Aura's database almost assuredly hits the relational database standard. You can get all the information you want through the use of the structured query language(SQL) indicated above. This language is designed to be a part of any relational database and is very powerful, obviously. But it is difficult for the novice to implement. This input form of Aura's substitutes for SQL but imposes constraints. Here's an example. Assume you wanted to determine the total number of dances for 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. In addition, what percent were circles, what percent partners. SQL would allow you to determine this in one statement whereas using this form requires the user to run this at minimum 12 times (possibly 18 depending on what you are after) and keep track of the results for further calculations. I know this given that this was a calculation needed to determine whether partner dances were becoming more popular over the last few years. Other things that a SQL programmer would take for granted, the use of logical Ors, are not possible through this form. Here's an example of a logical Or: determine the dances in 2001 done by both Gadi Bitton and Dudu Barzilay. You can do this in steps using Aura's form but it will not allow one step solutions to these type of questions. {TDC Note: We think our consultant is trying to tell you that Aura's web site can't do everything. But that's not its intention. It resolves most questions of Israeli dance and no one has done a better job. As we understand it, the SQL mentioned here was a development project that had a team of scientists and took 3 years. Aura has done this herself and it resolves 99% of the questions most Israeli dancers (with the one obvious exception you are reading here) would need answered.}

Now, how do we use this. This is the perfect example of logical and conditions: constraining information as you add choices. The more choices, probably the fewer dances meeting your criteria. We plan to use the singer portion of Aura's web site to make our example but we should indicate to you that the dance name is slightly more powerful than the simple control indicated in many of the screen shots above. We had no way of indicating preference for a first letter. With an entry in dance name and the radio button beginning with selected, you now have that possibility. In fact, you can get the best of both worlds by using an * as your first letter with the radio button beginning with on. Try it. Enter *nir in dance name, set beginning with as the option and hit the enter key. Notice 12 results and the letters nir are within all the dance names. it is much less that we had above when we saw 58 such matches as only dance name is being tested.

Let's assume you have other information about a dance. Choreographer, lyricist, singer, etc. Or perhaps you want to determine the works of some artist. This database is perfect for this. Consider the following problem: use the Aussie database to find information on the singer, Aura Levin-Lipski. Yes, you are correct. We were attempting to find out how much her database has tracked her amd in what name because Aura is also known as Aura Levin.]bThis is the perfect database and form to work with. Clicking on singer, we look through the singers indicated here. These names appear in alphabetical order and we can quickly hone in on Aura as you see to the ]d.

We'll select Aura Levin knowing that the system is designed to match not equal. Aura Levin will show up as a match if the entry in a song is Aura Levin-Litski. The reverse is not try: Aura Levin-Litsky will not show up as a match if the song's singer column contains Aura Levin. To the ]d we see this selection.

To the ]d you can see the results of our search. The songs are listed in alphabetical order (per transliteration). We see the translations, the year the dance was choreographed (We're pretty sure that the year pertains to the year this version of music was choreographed as Jerusalem of Gold is a product of Naomi Shemer and the claim was that this song was created prior to the 6 day war) and the choreographer. As mentioned above, we get indicators pertaining to the existance of video, audio and song lyrics.

For more information, we click the link pertaining to the entry, Nirkod Lashalom. And we now are presented a page dealing with the musical content. In addition we see CD and DVD information. Other information can be used also. In the older days, I am told, two or more dance sequences could be applied to one piece of music. By looking at where this song was played and which camps and workshops, one could also get a lead as to which sequence of steps by a choreographer is the one that is generally used if there was such a question. We hope that this has been informative for you and I think it was very generous of the disk coordinator website to allow this discussion of Aura's database and input forms.