[Opensim-dev] Proposal to change user ID types in prims table to support external user profiles.

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Previously in Heroes, we discussed the propogation of profile information via references to a URI rather than via 
copying and persisting profiles between OpenSim systems.

As a first step towards this goal, I want to change the user ID types in the prims table (OwnerID, CreatorID, 
LastOwnerID) to a type that can store a reasonably long URL.  At this point it's only crucial to change CreatorID, but 
it seems sensible to change the other IDs at the same time since I believe that these will also need to store URIs 
eventually.  I don't anticipate changing the field names.

At the moment in MySQL these types are char(36).  I propose to change them to varchar.  However, I don't know what the 
performance penalty of this is.  If this is high than I'm open to the suggestion of simply having a longer char limit. 
If the performance penalty is low then I think that a varchar would be better.  Analogous changes would be made to 
SQLite and MSSQL (not necessarily by me).

I anticipate that no other tables need to change.  The existing UUID based creator/owner/lastowner functionality will 
continue to work exactly as before.

If possible I will probably make the changes next week.

I actually plan an initial implementation which preserves creator names only for IARs which does not use an external 
URI.  Even when a URI based system arises this can still act as a fallback.  I believe that a name only implementation 
can be done without copying over any profile data.

An external URI solution will come later.  On reflection, there are lots of difficulties and problems with an external 
URI approach but on balance I think that it's a better long term route than profile copying.  I anticipate further 
discussion on this nearer the time.

Comments?

-- 
justincc
Justin Clark-Casey
http://justincc.wordpress.com