> hey there,
>
> I like this alot! How wonderful that a Escient's new license was posted
> yesterday on ./ and today we have a GPL alternative!
>
You've gotta love the slashdot effect. :)
> How about shooting me the schema and I'll take a whack at it? I'll also look
> into the data replication issues. XML might be the answer. . .
Actually, XML might be a good idea for all of the communication done -- both
from server to server for data replication and server to client for query
results. It would allow for easy omission of unrelated data or future
expansion of the protocol (clients could interpret a lot of the data by
themselves by just throwing unrecognized information into a listbox or
something). An XML request would look something similar to:
<request>
<cd id="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx">
<submitter><name>Joe
Submit</name><email>joesubmit nospam at freeamp.org</email></submitter>
<title>The title of the CD</title>
<publisher>Joe's Music Corp.</publisher>
<artist>Miscellaneous</artist>
<track number="1"><artist>The artist here</artist><title>The title of track
1</title></track>
<track number="2"><title>The title of track 2</title></track>
</cd>
<cd id="xxxxxxxxxxx">
<submitter><name>Joe
Submit</name><email>joesubmit nospam at freeamp.org</email></submitter>
etc... for another matching CD
</cd>
</request>
XML is a really powerful way of sending information like this. I think it
should be seriously looked into as a base technology.
-- /\/\att /\/\astracci mmastrac nospam at ucalgary.ca"The act of breaking into a computer system has to have the same social stigma as breaking into a neighbor's house. It should not matter that the neighbor's door is unlocked." [Ken Thompson, 1983 Turing Award Lecture]