On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 7:41 AM, Peter17 peter017@gmail.com wrote:
Mmmh.... sorry, I'm not really sure I understand... My suggestion is to use a shared database that would store the remote calls, not the content of the pages... In my mind, fetching the distant pages would be done through the API, not by accessing directly the distant database. The external wikis will soon be able to access our images very easily with wgUseInstantCommons but it is still not an access to the database...
That's not scalable on Wikimedia sites. Making external HTTP requests to other wiki's APIs just isn't fast enough; you must use the database for remote wiki information in the WMF. I suggest taking a deeper look at how the FileRepo does things. The abstract class FileRepo handles the high-level stuff while LocalFile, ForeignDBRepo and ForeignAPIRepo handle the specific implementations for things like getting thumbnails or metadata.
-Chad