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

19 May 2013

Well at least f$element comes in handy :-;
Van: Brian Hechinger
Verzonden: zondag 19 mei 2013 13:48 PM
Aan: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Beantwoorden: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Onderwerp: Re: [HECnet] Another sillyness. More information in the nodename database on
MIM.

CSV is a perfectly machine readable format that can have a properly defined schema.
Don't get me wrong, I like JSON and XML but I don't think they are the correct
uses for this case.

A few simple rules is all it takes. I'll outline a proposal later when I'm in
front of a computer.

-brian

On May 19, 2013, at 2:20, Mark Wickens <mark at wickensonline.co.uk> 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'.

 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.

 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.

 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?

 Regards, Mark.

 -- 
 --
 Mark Wickens
 http://wickensonline.co.uk
 http://declegacy.org.uk
 http://retrochallenge.org
 https://twitter.com/#!/@urbancamo
 HECNET: http://hecnet.eu, Email: HALO::MSW