[HECnet] Another sillyness. More information in the nodename database on MIM.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-05-19 07:20, Mark Wickens wrote:
On 19/05/2013 01:25, Johnny Billquist wrote:
After some more thinking on my part, I think I'm going to go slow on
this.
Yes, having me manage this does not scale. On the other hand, I'm not
convinced it needs scaling. If updates really becomes an issue, or if
people really starts asking for, and using data from this database, I
look at it more as a curiosity and extension of just the basic need I
had for a database for node names and node numbers, with a person
attached.

But I'm very interested in having more of a discussion about what
could possibly be done. And I also take donations in form of code... ;-)
If the info is to be useful, other than in a TYPE INFO.TXT capacity then
it needs to be in a machine readable format with a well defined schema.
Two obvious choices are XML or JSON. Whilst I work more with XML in a
day-to-day basis JSON is definitely more 'human-friendly'.

In a way it might be important to remember that my nodename database extensions right now is just a fun project on my behalf without much defined needs. Just like most things people do on HECnet it is totally voluntary, and can be considered a pet project without any real demand.

I have not really seen any need for this stuff, so it's just for my enjoyment. I personally found the INFO.TXT files unsatisfying, so I'm doing something else. If it is meaningful or useful is not my primary concern. It satisfies me. If it later turns out to be useful, that is really cool. The same thing can be said of HECnet in general.

All that said, yes, I could definitely consider a more strict format of how something like location is defined. However, you will never see me use XML if I can ever avoid it. And it is a really bad fit with older computer systems, as it quickly becomes so big.

The same can be said of JSON. If we really want to get fine grained information in fields, I would do that natively in Datatrieve. Why on earth would I use a silly serializable external representation when I already have the data in a database?

(And while JSON might be easier for a human to read, it's about as unfriendly a XML when it comes to actually manipulating by hand. You need tools, and those tools are also just out of the question on something like a PDP-11. And I will not write my own.)

I think we've got to this point in this discussion quite a few times -
what is the point of taking the effort to get hecnet machine owners to
provide this information? From a personal point of view I think a google
map with an indication of the links between areas would be great, but
there is not really any point in doing this unless we have a good
initial uptake and then people keep their info up-to-date. It would be
good promotional material, if that's deemed of use.

Right. And my main concern is actually that people do not have enough interest to make this work. So it is either having a project by a single individual, or else have something that never takes off.

But that is just what I think.

I'm happy to define an initial schema based in the existing info file
data (looking at how the data currently available could be shoehorned
into a tighter schema definition) and we could go from there.

Feel free. Don't expect me to use it. :-)

However, I'm suspecting that there's probably half a dozen of us that
would get on board with this - how many of the area operators are active
on the mailing list?

Right. The people actively participating in this discussion is less than the number of "responsible" persons.

So at this point I do not believe in a distributed effort of some sort. I also do not believe in doing things in something ugly like XML or JSON. I have a database. I can change the schema of that, if needed. That is the easy part. The hard part is having data *in* the database that is up to date, and in a conformant shape. Neither of those problems are addressed by having a schema as such, nor by using some other representation.

Sorry. I got a bit carried away after I came as far as XML. :-) Your suggestions and offers to work are most appreciated, Mark.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                  ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol