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

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-05-18 18:49, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 05/18/2013 12:45 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
      I like the idea of giving us all write access.   Maybe you can set up
regular dumps of the database for restoration in case someone screws up.

I can certainly do that. It just becomes a question of people might need to
reenter information in case a rollback has to go far. Also trickier to
realize if "corruption" actually have happened perhaps.
On the other hand, I could atleast have permissions that only allowed random
people to modify data, not add new, nor delete.

    That's a really good idea.

Another suggestion of having one table per area was given, which should be pretty doable as well. There are some issues that become more burdensome, but it might be worth looking into.

      It would give some of us a chance to learn Datatrieve in a real-world
scenario.   I myself have never worked with it and would like to learn it; I
learn best by doing.

Indeed. Very true. Datatrieve is not that different from something like MySQL
really. Different syntax, and some different capabilities (mostly more
restricted), but otherwise not that strange. If you've ever played with such
things.

    I've done a lot of database work, going back to Ingres and QUEL.   I'm one
of those weirdos who actually enjoys databases...I think most people find
database work to be dry and boring, but I find it fascinating and
stimulating.   I've seen DTR applications used in production but have never
had any exposure at all to the software...having something to actually *do*
with it, like this node database for HECnet, is great stuff, and a great way
to learn.

I've been trying to avoid databases all my life, but when I got my hands on Datatrieve I had to come up with some kind of project to use it in, since I like to test all my PDP-11 software. And the first thing I started on was the nodename database, and right now it has started to pay off a little, since I can easily do various things with the data, and it has turned out to be helpful a couple of times...

	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