Consolidaton of other DBs

[jrockintuitive]

This is a question that I want to mainly pose to Reven, Jeff, and Jorm- all opionions are welcomed and encouraged.

Do you think we are ready to consolidate all of our (community ours - because they are really yours) databases?
I use XRecord and Video Archiver (I know I owe both of you a bug list and I will get it to you this weekend as promised-work has been hectic this past 2 weeks) and from reading several posts it seam that most video plugin users use my video....
It would be really cool if all video plugins share the same datasource.

If your table structures are still changing frequently, it would probably be a bad idea, however, if they are stable- well, it could be done.

Let me know your thougths.

[reven]

my videos stores a lot more info than any other database, well that i know off. and everything is stored with relative file names, and not absolute names, which could create issues with xrecord and video arch. and to be honest, who uses xrecord, video arch and my videos together? if you're using video arch chances are your not using my vids and vice versa.

[Jeff]

Actually the video archive database stores a superset of the information used by all three plug-ins in a format (including not using absolute file names) that could be used by all three. In this latest release I looked at all the databases and put the extra fields into the ArchiveTable to store what Reven has in the VideoTable of his database and Jorm has in his rectracker database. MyDatabase.mdb does have tables that are not in the video archive database, but they could be added. My idea was either that we could create a single database for everything or that at a minimum the video archive plug-in would be able to suck up information from all the other databases so that users using more than one at least wouldn't have to go back into the video archive plug-in and reenter database. I was also going to go the other way around and push information from the video archive database back into the other databases, but I didn't do that yet. I resync to the MyVideos database each time GBPVR is started or when the user presses the GO key. I don't important anything from the rectracker database but I will probably add this next time to pull in uniqueIDs, which I now use in the archive plug-in as well to perform basic pruning of pending recordings.

Jeff

[reven]

yeah but my videos uses the following tables
ActorGallery - ImageURL, ActorName, GalleryImage
ActorInfo - ActorURL, ActorName, DateOfBirth, PlaceOfBirth, Biography, ActorPhoto
KnownFileLocations - AbsoluteLocation, Title
MovieCast - Title, Billing, Actor, CharacterName
PinNumbers - Filename, PinNumber
VideoInfo - Filename, Title, Subtitle, Description, Tagline, Runtime, Genres, Certification, YearOfRelease, Rating, Votes, Director, Writer, Seen, Poster

the only really useful table in that for the other plugins is videoinfo (and maybe pinnumbers), but the rest of the tables need to be maintained and updated when ever a user does a imdb/tv tome etc lookup, and the other plugins just dont do this. and for good reason, it takes longer and they would have no use for this extra info (well currently they would have no use).

[Jeff]

It would be nice to share the VideoInfo and PinNumbers. If you look in the video archive plug-in database it includes everything in the VideoInfo table plus channel number (for recordings) recording date, recording time, and UniqueID.

Jeff

[jrockintuitive]

but the rest of the tables need to be maintained and updated when ever a user does a imdb/tv tome etc lookup, and the other plugins just dont do this

Not true... at least I hope for the future. I asked the question origionally for selfesh reason. In guide2j I want the a user to be able to download/view extra information that reven is capturing. I also want the poster information.
Basically, I want to freeload off of your great work.

Reven, it sound like you have an objections to consolidate... Do you think we are not readyn to consolidate, not a good idea, or ?????

[reven]

its just that if we use one database, we should all maintain all the fields of that database, otherwise the functionality of some plugins mightnt work how they were meant to work.. reading from the database isnt a problem, but chances are if a plugin wants to get info from a database it also wants to add info to the database. and with my videos, if a user downloads info from imdb.com they should also download information on the missing actors in the database for that movie. but downloading this extra info takes time, and isnt needed for guide2j or video arch. however if its not downloaded the "actors" feature in my videos just wont work.

i agree that downloading this info and storing it in 3 different databases is silly, i would only agree to this if the "actors" info comes to some kind of agreement. but its silly to slow down the imdb lookups for every other plugin.... argh! i dont know, im going to bed.

[jorm]

The only databases that xrecord/fastfind currently use is rectracker and zap2it. XRecords videos data (when exported or archived) is stored in a file so I can copy them from my parents machine to mine for channels that they get and I do not. I would also like to steal the poster logic and cast logic (database) since mine is only hitting imdb and is not very robust, just something I put together in about 15 minutes.

Jeff, you want to be able to put rectracker in the same database that you are using. I can add a rectracker.xml that has the settings including the database connection string and filename. That way you can point to a rectracker.mdb or your database.

[jrockintuitive]

I just thought of a great feature based on Jorms needs.

What if we create an export program feature. This feature would export show(s) with an xml file to a zip file. Then we can have an import function that we read the zip file and xml file (with all of the data needed to do a proper import).

I would be willing to write the export and import code. However, it would be up to you guys to include the front-end functionality in your plugin.

This could be the precursor work needed for "sharing" shows.

What do you guys think?

[Jeff]

If you are willing to live with just the show name, description, subtitle, duration, etc (that is, everything related to the show except the actors) then you can already get what you need from the commongbpvrutilities.dll library.

Code:

// Open the database
ArchiveDb archiveDb = new ArchiveDb();
archiveDb.Open();

// Get an empty record
ArchiveRecord record = new ArchiveRecord();

// See if we can find an information for this filename in the archive database
// As a side effect, if the record is not found in the archive database this function
// will automatically seach in the GBPVR database and import the informaiton if found there
// read any information
if (archiveDB.GetRecordForFile(filename, record) == true)
{
   // Do something with the record
}


// Close the database when done
archiveDb.Close();

The record structure returns the title, subtitle, description etc. See library description
Jeff