Date index for Aug 2002

Hello Dave,

Dave Nuttall wrote:

> I'd think that if you put in the repository concept, there would also have
> to be versioning, whether by using the RedHat "up2date" concept or whatever.

Versioning may not be a big issue, since the data we're talking about 
does not have 'versions' per se. How often does a country change? And in 
the case of something like currencies, it changes so often that keeping 
track of a version does not make sense.

A problem would be user modifications. Suppose you import a record, and 
you change it. With your next synchronization, you want to keep your own 
modifications ofcourse. So for records that use this synchronisation 
mechanism, you would have to tag records with a modifiedby field, that 
can be 'user' or 'achievo'. A synchronize action might then overwrite 
all records that have this field set to achievo, and prompt the user for 
every record that is no longer achievo's.

> You could just be on the edge of inventing a new type of OpenSource widget:
> centrally managed database values.

Hmm. Interesting. :)

> might want to share data with constituents but have to rely on COTS
> replication packages.  Those are always a real mess anytime you introduce
> firewalls, proxy servers, et al.

Yes, I have seen such a situation before. We have a customer who runs 
Achievo on their local intranet, but wants to publish project data on 
their external webserver. It's hell to synchronise that with database 
replication tools.

Greetings,
Ivo