Ami Nia
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Posted - 2008.08.01 14:53:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Dronte
Jeeeesus christ, stop whining about the format already!. Its not like you had to wait long, the community had released the first ANSI SQL, MySQL, PSQL etc. version without 2 hours!! of the initial release, and posted links to them, both in this thread and in the various threads on the tech lab forum and on #eve-dev on IRC.
I strongly disagree.
This is not an OS war or a MS hate cry. It's both a technical and a matter of principle.
To begin with, CCP is supposedly supporting EvE on multiple platforms. Nobody on ANY of the officially supported platforms should ever need to access player-translated data. It is CCP that has to first-handedly provide usable files for each platform. It is not a question of how much time passes between the official files release and the translated files availability. It is the fact that CCP is to do the translations and consider them formally official files (or better yet release a platform independent, human readable, structured file).
Second, each and every binary distribution of a data base is intrinsically an inferior distribution. Any sane data dump shall be in a pure text format, possibly understandable by humans to the extent of being editable with pure text tools (as in notepad). This is a well know fact in the computer science community. There are only two forces that can make a binary file superior: file size (for example for transmission over the net or for reduced storage requirements) and monopolistic format lockouts.
If the first case is the reason to have a binary format, then the solution is to use a text format and then compress it with a well known patent free algorithm and into a well known patent free file format. Like zip, gz or bz.
If the second case is the reason to have a binary format, then you are in fact admitting that you do not want any one (but those few you select) to be able to access the data.
Technically the format CCP chose to distribute the data dump is:
-) a great format for internal use if and only if the company is not mature enough to be open to move to a better platform (that is: MS SQL probably IS the better platform. Now. But there's no guarantee it will still be in 5 or 10 years. And CCP should be ready to adapt if things change).
-) the kind of format an expert of MS SQL will recommend if he/she was to single handedly decide. What format to use when publicly releasing data should never be a single person decision, but always a committee consensus. And the manager should make sure the committee is both technically savvy and as heterogeneous as possible.
-) a very bad format to use for releasing data that is officially destined to multiple platforms.
Whining about the chosen format is therefore absolutely pertinent.
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