Re: refdb db in menu?

Hi Markus,

You wrote:

> Michael Smith writes:
>  > hmm, I realize now that naming the base db "refdb" is arbitrary. I guess
>  > a user could choose during install to call the base database "mybasedb"
>  > or whatever, and then could create another database called "refdb", and
>  > have references added to that.
>  > 
> 
> No, the name is not arbitrary. It is hard-coded in the main header
> file. The name changes once in a while if I change the database schema
> and want to allow users to run parallel installations of RefDB using
> the old and the new schemas at the same time.

Ah, OK. I guess I can then hard-code it into the Emacs code. You say it
changes once in a while, and I remember that it's 'refdb1' for v0.9.3.
Does that mean you alternate it between those two values, and so if I
have the Emacs code filter out both "refdb" and "refdb1", it will handle
things OK if/when you need to change the name again?

>  > Or to make it more configurable, we could add refdb-listdb-ignore-list
>  > variable, again with default value "refdb", but make it a list. Users
>  > could put multiple names into it that way, and then wouldn't need to
>  > mess around with trying to figure out how to construct a regex and
>  > express it in whatever syntax their backend database supported.
>  > 
>  > And that way, we could also include the built-in database names for the
>  > backends -- i.e. Postgres's "template0" and "template1" databases, and
>  > whatever the names are of the built-in databases that MySQL sets up.
>  > 
> 
> The latter is "mysql" (who would have guessed that?).

Heh -- I should have guessed, I guess :)

>  > How does that sound?
>  > 
> 
> I think it may be useful in quite a couple of cases, so I'd suggest to
> add such a list. This black list together with the regexp that allows
> to define a white list should be sufficient to pick the right
> databases.

OK. But, along with the blacklist, should I just have it hard-coded to
always ignore the following, even if they're not included in the
blacklist? If not, there's a risk of users trying to add RefDB data to
these databases.

  refdb refdb1 mysql template0 template1

>  > Now that I write all that, though, I wonder whether that logic might not
>  > be better handled on the RefDB side -- so that refdbd -C listdb wouldn't
>  > return the name of the base RefDB database, whatever its name, or of the
>  > built-in backend database names.
>  > 
> 
> I could do this of course, but it is still a half-assed solution as it
> does not solve the problem of non-RefDB databases served by the same
> database engine. A real solution would require refdbd to test each
> database returned by listdb whether or not it is a RefDB database,
> e.g. by running a query that retrieves values of all fields listed by
> their names. This would also filter out databases that the user has no
> permission to access anyway. Should I put this on my todo list?

Yes, I think it should be on your todo list. How much of a priority it
should be relative to other things you have on there, I can't say.

  --Mike

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