[Wikipedia-l] Plans for RecentChanges page; programmers only!

[Brion L. VIBBER]

(moving thread to wikitech-l)

Jan Hidders wrote:

>From: "Brion L. VIBBER" <brion at pobox.com>
>
>>Jan Hidders wrote:
>>
>>>Dear fellow programmers,
>>>
>>>I saw that the SQL code for the Recent Changes page is rather inefficient
>>>and causes a lot of database access, so I decided to improve this.
>>>
>However,
>
>>>I can only do this properly if the timestamp field in the tables is split
>>>
>in
>
>>>a day and a time field.
>>>
>>Can I ask how exactly that would help? I'm not much of a database guru,
>>so the answer isn't obvious to me and I'm a bit curious.
>>
>
>It allows me to do a GROUP BY on the day. That way I can take a left outer
>join between the cur table and the old table and group on the combination of
>cur_day and cur_title. This allows me to get all the information I need for
>the page in one SQL statement.
>
Right. Hmm, can you use TO_DAYS(cur_timestamp) or some such? Or is that 
just going to cause problems?

If it's more efficient to use a split timestamp, I can't come up with 
any objection. But, it's Magnus' baby. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)