From: Daniel V. <da...@vi...> - 2007-07-14 23:12:39
|
Hi, > In the XML format, it would look like this: > <software> > <id type="genmsx">1234</id> > ... > </software> sounds good. > > From an XML perspective, these are the rules: > - a <software> entry can have any number of <id> tags > - for each <software> entry, each ID type should occur at most once > (otherwise it wouldn't be a unique ID) I don't think this should be a restriction. Imagine you treat different releases as different <software> blocks (which I think is a good idea, see below), some id types may have one id for all different releases, which means that one id may be put in multiple <software> blocks. > - the ID value is a string (a specific ID scheme might interpret it as for > example an integer, but at the XML level it is a string) Agree > > The XML format supports any number of ID schemes. However, as a policy > we'll use the "genmsx" type for MSX software, which means the IDs of the > Generation MSX software database. Agree. The generation MSX database is the most complete so using something else doesn't make sense. Furthermore I agree that we should try to avoid adding other types of id's for MSX software (unless there is a very good motivation for it and I don't have one). > - storing multiple IDs will increase the data size This only makes sense if someone develops a very good database. I can see that being a possibility, for example if some Japanese group/organization wants to create a japanese database. In that case it would probably be interesting, at least for blueMSX to support that database since Japan has the biggest number of blueMSX users. But I'm not promoting a different type. It would be better if any new databases would use the genmsx ids in that case. > > The motivation for using Generation MSX IDs as the preferred ID scheme: > - they have a large number of titles in their DB already > - they have a lot of useful information about MSX software that we could > link to at some point in the future > - we have the ability to add missing entries (at least Manuel can do that; > if needed probably more people could get access) > - Sandy (Generation MSX admin) is interested in cooperating Fully agree. I support the genmsx ID's 100%. > > > Unresolved issues: > > What exactly is one piece of software? In Generation MSX some games have > multiple releases, for example the original Japanese version and a Korean > version. Should we consider this as one or two entries in the software DB? My opinion is that a game that has two versions, one Korean and one Japanese would have two entries in the software DB. Same with the games that were released by different companies. The reason is that we have other information in the database about release year, country of origin, etc. so to me it makes sense to treat different releases as different software DB tags. I can see some exeptions if needed, for example the different versions of Universe Unknown or Sudoku, which clearly is the same game but with a few bug fixes. I have one other wish though and that is to change the name of the generated xml file from softwaredb.xml to msx.xml. Actually I feel quite strongly for this change because the name softwaredb.xml is too generic. bluemsx supports multiple databases and currently has one for each system (msx, coleco, svi, and sega). This is not a big deal because we can release blueMSX with an xml file called msx.xml and I think we'll do that for next release. I also know that there are some entries in the bluemsx softwaredb.xml that may not be in Vampiers database. Should be easy to find out. -Daniel |