Re: Making metadata storage SQL-driven

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 07:31 -0400, Luis Villa wrote:
> On 9/1/05, Jamie McCracken <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk> wrote:
> > Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 12:10 +0100, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> > >
> > >>Christian Neumair wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>I really wonder why we rely on files for our metadata. It has issues [1]
> > >>>where a synchronous fopen and read or write operation would really take
> > >>>too long, requiring us to schedule reads/writes. Without doing any
> > >>>performance measures, I think this could significantly speed up our
> > >>>metadata code for big directories. I think we should do the same as
> > >>>beagle, and rely on a tiny SQL server, doing all our metadata operations
> > >>>synchronously. I'm not a big fan of EAs, since they seem to be some
> > >>>different flavors and inconsistencies among various implementations.
> > >>>
> > >>>[1] http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y364247BB
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >>you are correct and thats why Im building such a system for Gconf/common
> > >>config system, general metadata server, schematic storage (like winFS),
> > >>indexing and anything else that needs fast structured storage.
> > >>
> > >>My system is called DDS (data desktop server) and is simply a dbus
> > >>wrapper around the embedded mysql DB.
> > >
> > >
> > > please don't use MySQL directly! First, you will impose users to install
> > > and configure a DB server, which might not be possible in all cases.
> > 
> > the *embedded* version of mysql is just a shared object - you dont need
> > to install the full mysql to get it. RPMs for the *embedded* version are
> > on mysql's website. The *embedded* mysql is the same as sqlite in that
> > regard.
> 
> I presume that ny metadata system really should be part of the
> platform so that other apps can access it; that would rule out mysql
> on licensing concerns.
> 
right, mysql is GPL, so can't really link to it from LGPL code.

In gnome-db (and other projects) we asked for a special treatment so
that we could link against their GPL libs from our LGPL ones, but with
no answer so far AFAIK from them.

So, again, for embedded dbs', use SQLite, and, if you use libgda, you
allow admins to set up the database on a different server, like
PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, etc
-- 
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>