Pat Farrell;141120 Wrote: > > To start with, tags in a music file have to follow whatever > hierarchical > structure the files are in (unless, horrors, it is flat). What people > care about is relational data, who the players are, writers, etc. > Attempting to emulate a relational database in flat or hierarchical > data > is at best a ton of wasted work. Good thing that relational databases > have been known technology for 30+ years. > > The trick is to make all the voodoo, selects, outer joins, etc. > invisible to the user. >
A centralized database is a fine implementation choice for a particular player, enabling various sorts, filters, and views of the data. Which is why almost all programs, from iTunes to WMP to Slim to Foobar, use a database internally. But a database is a TERRIBLE place to use as the primary storage for a file's metadata. It's difficult to use with multiple applications, it's a single point of failure that can wipe out all metadata, and it means that files copied off somewhere else lose all their metadata. Metadata belongs in tags, and players that use metadata should build internal database caches of the metadata. Which is, fortunately enough, exactly the current situation. -- mkozlows ------------------------------------------------------------------------ mkozlows's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=62 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=27946 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
