On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 10:58:01AM +0100, Andre Engels
wrote:
So we have
the following namespaces: User, User_talk, Global (or Root),
Talk,
and Special? Is Wikipedia actually a separate namespace, or is it just
a prefix to some articles?
Yes, Wikipedia is a namespace, as are Wikipedia talk, Image and Image talk.
I'm not 100% sure about Special, though - there are no 'real' pages in
there,
just query results.
What is the purpose of namespaces? Why not have the following tables:
current_articles
current_binaries
current_discussions
previous_articles
previous_binaries
previous_discussions
Knowing whether something is an article, binary, or a discussion seems
to cover what we need.
You would have to double a lot of effort: You need separate SQL-statements
for things like update_article, update_discussion, update_wikipedia, ....
Using a namespace you just have one additional attribute to keep track of
and your code stays simple and readable.
JeLuF