Re: [Gramps-devel] Should Living Proxy use the full database? (was Bug in Filters/Proxies?)

[Doug B. <dou...@gm...>]

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Gerald Britton
<ger...@gm...> wrote:
> On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Doug Blank <dou...@gm...> wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>>>> Gerald,
>>>>
>>>> Are you saying that the living proxy should not use the full database
>>>> to determine if a person is alive or not? It seems to me that it
>>>> should use the bottom of the base databases.
>>>
>>> That is exactly what I am saying.  Otherwise the proxies have to know
>>> too much.  They function as a chain but are completely unaware of each
>>> other.  I think that this is correct, but I'm just one voice.
>>
>> With the Living Proxy, there are two uses of the database: 1) as the
>> normal wrapper that protects and interprets living people's data so
>> that not too much info gets out, and 2) as an internal use for
>> determining if someone is alive or not.
>>
>> I see no reason that the second usage needs to confine its access to
>> only those people that the first (and lower proxies) have access to.
>> For example, consider a Living proxy that completely removes access to
>> living people. If the Living proxy is already wrapped around a Private
>> proxy, and a user-defined filter, then the evidence one can use to
>> determine probably_alive could be severely diminished if you only have
>> access to that data.
>>
>> However, I see no reason that the chain of proxies need to be aware of
>> this issue. We just need to change probably_alive so that it uses the
>> full database rather than the proxy.
>
> I agree with that.  Note though, that if you use probably_alive in a
> custom filter, then use that in NavWeb e.g. in combination with a
> proxy, you may not always get the results you expect, since the proxy
> would limit what data probably_alive has available.  The alternative
> would be to make probably_alive drill down to the "real" database to
> do its work -- not difficult but we must be sure that's the correct
> approach.

Yes, that was all I meant, and the following is exactly what I did in
probably_alive.

-Doug

> Here's how proxybase.py does this:
>
> self.db = self.basedb = db
> while isinstance(self.basedb, ProxyDbBase):
>            self.basedb = self.basedb.db
>
>
>
>>
>> -Doug
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Gerald Britton
>