[Opensim-dev] database fields names

[Justin Clark-Casey]

I would say that those interfaces are not public - they are internal OpenSimulator interfaces that unfortunately are the 
only way that region modules can currently interact with the simulator (in addition to all the other methods that aren't 
on interfaces).  None of these interfaces have been formalized or even documented as being available to region modules.

As soon as you start freezing these interfaces you lose the ability to evolve the codebase for the better without 
incurring the cost of deprecation cycles.  Projects like Linux take this position [1].

I would also argue that consistency is extremely important.  It's okay once you know the codebase but anybody learning 
things for the first time is greatly aided by consistency, whether that's in method/property naming, parameters, 
interface design, code formatting, etc.  If the code isn't consistent that acts as an extra barrier to adoption.

As for database column names, I would dearly love them to be consistent.  Other code shouldn't really be operating on 
OpenSimulator database tables directly but should go through Robust/OpenSimulator external interfaces, though I know the 
right interfaces aren't always currently available.  I'm also not convinced that column renaming would be an expensive 
migration.

I believe that eventually column names have to be reasonably consistent if OpenSimulator is to be taken seriously by the 
wider development community as a project.  However, I also don't think that this is a point worth fighting over right now.

[1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt

On 25/10/13 18:25, Adams, Robert wrote:
> -1
>
> As someone who has several external modules and knowing of several different external projects that directly access the
> database, the names should not change. I’d bad enough with Justin ‘cleaning up’ public interfaces of OpenSimulator classes.
>
> While strange naming is irritating and would be cleaner if modified, don’t change things just to make them prettier.
>
> -- ra
>
> *From:*opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de [mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de] *On Behalf Of *ssm2017
> *Sent:* Friday, October 25, 2013 6:23 AM
> *To:* opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> *Subject:* [Opensim-dev] database fields names
>
> hello
>
> what do you think about the idea to take the opportunity for 0.7.8 to unify the database tables names ?
>
> for example, the uuid of a user in UserAccounts is PrincipalID, in the Presence table, this is UserID and in auth
> (without capitalization) this is UUID...
>
>
>
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-- 
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
OSVW Consulting
http://justincc.org
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