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Enumerations used in the OSEE database [message #522605]

Tue, 23 March 2010 10:52

Mark D-B

Messages: 188
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

We have started to use OSEE for entering data which is then displayed in other formats, because OSEE gives us relation capability.

However, this is made harder by having to guess what the enumerations used in the database mean. For example, we initially thought that tx_current was a Boolean, but have now realised that it is an enumeration having four values and we have not yet worked out what 2 and 3 mean.

Does anyone happen to have documentation for the database enumeration values please to save me having to search the code?

Note: I know that we would ideally be using the OSEE app server to get at the data and have an Eclipse app for our custom formats but we have PHP resources more readily available at the moment.

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Re: Enumerations used in the OSEE database [message #525241 is a reply to message #522605]

Mon, 05 April 2010 19:32

Ryan Schmitt

Messages: 16
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

The tx_current values have the following meanings:

0 - not current
1 - current
2 - deleted
3 - artifact deleted

When an item has been deleted, you'll see a tx_current of 2 as the last entry in its history, because there is no way to undelete items currently. A tx_current of 3, "artifact deleted," means that the item (an attribute or relation) was deleted because its associated artifact was deleted.

For historical reasons, there is duplicate logic going on here (both the tx_current and the modtype indicate deletion). Originally, there was no tx_current column at all, and the current row in the txs table was determined by finding the row with the highest transaction ID. The performance of this solution was so poor as to render OSEE completely unusable, so tx_current was introduced as an indexable value that could be used to quickly find the current row.

The reason this is not documented outside of the source code is that it is very, very low level stuff--only a few framework developers ever have to know this stuff, since it's supposed to be encapsulated for the benefit of application developers writing against the OSEE API. Are you trying to insert data directly into the database?

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Re: Enumerations used in the OSEE database [message #525720 is a reply to message #525241]

Wed, 07 April 2010 14:58

Mark D-B

Messages: 188
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi Ryan.

We know we should really be going via the app server but the problem is available resources at the moment, per the note in my original post.

We are only reading data from the database, not writing to it, and are using PHP to generate forms and Excel exports. The database user used for this functionality does not have write access, to avoid any mistakes corrupting OSEE's data.

By the way, I wasn't implying that this sort of underlying database information should be documented, I was just wondering if anyone outside the development team had already "been there and done that" so to speak.

All the best,

Mark

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Re: Enumerations used in the OSEE database [message #525773 is a reply to message #522605]

Wed, 07 April 2010 18:17

Ryan Schmitt

Messages: 16
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

You might be interested in the work one of our team members is doing on a web interface for ATS. It sounds very, very similar to what he's trying to accomplish (read-only report access for external users). What types of data are you trying to display?

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Re: Enumerations used in the OSEE database [message #576477 is a reply to message #522605]

Mon, 05 April 2010 19:32

Ryan Schmitt

Messages: 16
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

The tx_current values have the following meanings:

0 - not current
1 - current
2 - deleted
3 - artifact deleted

When an item has been deleted, you'll see a tx_current of 2 as the last entry in its history, because there is no way to undelete items currently. A tx_current of 3, "artifact deleted," means that the item (an attribute or relation) was deleted because its associated artifact was deleted.

For historical reasons, there is duplicate logic going on here (both the tx_current and the modtype indicate deletion). Originally, there was no tx_current column at all, and the current row in the txs table was determined by finding the row with the highest transaction ID. The performance of this solution was so poor as to render OSEE completely unusable, so tx_current was introduced as an indexable value that could be used to quickly find the current row.

The reason this is not documented outside of the source code is that it is very, very low level stuff--only a few framework developers ever have to know this stuff, since it's supposed to be encapsulated for the benefit of application developers writing against the OSEE API. Are you trying to insert data directly into the database?

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