gEDA-user: symbol databases, was Re: Wish list, sort of

[Dave McGuire <mcguire@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 5, 2009, at 5:32 PM, Mike Crowe wrote:
> I don't know if putting gschem netlist data or the graphics data  
> into a
> database helps with much, as relationalism there doesn't seem to be of
> much benefit.

   Relationalism may not be of much benefit, but easy, centralized,  
network-based management of that data certainly is.  I regularly edit  
schematics from 3-4 different computers, and I currently use rsync to  
keep my symbols up-to-date across them.  I'd much rather use a  
central network-based repository.  Since I already have a large  
database server here that manages everything from internal web  
content to email aliases, I'd like to just stick it in there.

   I'd love to be able to give gschem a list of sorta-URLs, each  
looking something like this:

   mysql://mysqlserver.neurotica.com/<dbname>/<tablename>

   ...and have the symbols stored there automagically added to the  
list of available symbols.  Anyone with a database server (I suspect  
I'm not the only one here) could have local repositories, someone  
could even run a large "central" one for all of us (I'd volunteer to  
do that), etc etc.

   That's something I could probably whip up in a few hours, except  
for the configuration side of it. (I've not looked at that part of  
gschem)

   The same sort of functionality would be very useful for footprints  
in PCB.

   What I'm envisioning is simply something that would augment the  
"getting it all from /usr/local/geda/share/gEDA/sym/..." setup.   
Which, of course, works extremely well, but a centralizable mechanism  
would be really nice.

   This is, of course, something that could also be easily  
accomplished using NFS outside of gschem, or HTTP, even XML-RPC...or  
pretty much any other protocol.  But database servers, MySQL servers  
in particular, are pretty ubiquitous, and the API is easy.

             -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL




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