Farkas, Illes wrote:
(1) Is the following statement correct? The dump file
"pages-meta-history" lists all versions (revisions) of each page and
the dump file "pages-meta-current-yyyymmdd" contains for each page
only one of these versions (revisions): the last version of the page
before the day yyyymmdd
Yes.
(2) Is the following statement correct? : The dump
file
"pages-meta-history-yyyymmdd" contains the histories of ___exactly___
those (not more and not fewer) pages that exist on the selected day
(yyyymmdd).
Almost yes. The dump file tagged yyyymmdd, was made at the yyyymmdd dump
batch. Only pages existing when the dump was made are included there.
But dumps can take many days (for big wikis), and although xml files are
consistent by themselves, they aren't necessarily consistent for that
date (and the several yyyymmdd files to download don't necessary match
the same point of time).
So treat the yyyymmdd date as an approximated time, not hard.
OTOH this is probably too much information for your needs. iawiki is
done in half an hour, so pages will be those that existed on that day
(as the dump begins and ends at yyyymmdd).