On Mon, 2005-03-28 at 17:51 +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
It sounds so easy. But would you accept this
procedure if it requires
that Wikipedia is unavailable or read-only for one hour? for one day?
for one week? The conversion time should be a design requirement.
...
Not converting the database is the fastest way to cut conversion time.
Perhaps you can live with the legacy format? Consider it.
A properly written export shouldn't need to have exclusive access to the
database at all. The only thing that would need that is a complete
reinstall and import, which is only one application of the format and
should be needed very rarely (switching to a wholly new hardware or
software base, for example). In those few cases (maybe once every few
years or so), Wikipedia being uneditable for a few days would not be
such a terrible thing--better than it being down completely because the
servers are overwhelmed.
--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee(a)piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>