[Sugar-devel] On datastore object IDs

[Walter Bender]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 1:06 PM, Benjamin M.
Schwartz<bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Walter Bender wrote:
>> Presumably the objects themselves have unique ids, a la git, so that
>> we can refer to the same object from multiple trees and by multiple
>> users? (e.g., when I share something with you, it still has the same
>> name.)
>
> Hmmm.
>
> So there are two issues here:
>
> 1. blob uuid.  Each object may own a blob, and if two objects own
> identical blobs, then there's no good reason to store them separately on
> disk.  Something like this is used in git, I suspect.  In our case, I
> cannot think of any reason to expose the uuid outside the datastore
> itself.  It might be useful for accelerating various forms of
> object-sharing and backup, but those operations are still "behind the
> curtain".
>
> 2. Some sort of object name.  I think I agree with you that each object
> should probably have a user-editable name or  title.  We certainly need
> something like this for the Actions, and so it makes enough sense to
> extend it to objects.  However, I think that we can keep this as it
> currently is: a metadata attribute like any other.  When I share an object
> with you, it may get a new tree_id and a version_id of 1, but it keeps all
> its metadata, including its title.
>
> --Ben
>
>

I think I was getting at something simpler, as related to your (1)
above. In git, an object is unique, whether or not I pulled it, as
long as I don't modify it. So I can always refer to it, even if I
wasn't the one who created it. So I'd like to be able to extend (1) to
include objects I share.

Use case: I send you a presentation that refers to objects in the
datastore. I need to send you those objects too, but I would not like
to have to use some additional layer of reference.

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org