[mythtv] Use callsign for scheduling

[Tako Schotanus]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-dev-bounces at mythtv.org 
> [mailto:mythtv-dev-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of David Engel
> Sent: woensdag 21 april 2004 2:59
> To: Development of mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv] Use callsign for scheduling
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 09:15:01AM +1000, Brian May wrote:
> > >>>>> "David" == David Engel <gigem at comcast.net> writes:
> > 
> >     David> OK, then quit complaining and make a concrete 
> proposal (or
> >     David> better yet, a patch) to do this.  Please make sure it
> >     David> handles upgrading and backwards and forwards 
> compatibility.
> > 
> > Like I proposed earlier (although I may not have time to do it),
> > create a new "station" table. To do this and maintain compatibility,
> > how about the following?
> 
> How are mythweb, mythfilldatabase, the scheduler or anything else
> which uses the channel table affected?
> 
> Is the program table changed?  Assuming you now have unique
> stationids, wouldn't it make sense tie programs to stations instead of
> channels?

(*)

> 
> What is a user supposed to do if their grabber sets up two channels to
> different stations when they are really the same station?

I imagine the same as what happens when a user doesn't manually change
the callsign for two different channels to be the same because they are
actually both the same station. And in the case where the callsigns are
filled in by the grabber the system should automatically map channels to
the same station if their callsign is exactly the same.

>  What
> happens to their existing record entries?

(*)

> 
> What is a user supposed to do if their channels get changed and their
> grabber creates new stationids because it doesn't or can't tell the
> difference between inserts, deletes and moves?  What happens to their
> existing record entries?

Again I imagine the same happens as it would right now: your channel
table gets messed up, if my grabber would suddenly start using other
xmltvids I would defenitely _not_ be happy. There might be other
considerations as well that I'm not aware of if the grabber also
includes callsigns, no idea.

> 
> I'm not picking on you.  Rather, I'm trying to point out that there is
> a lot more to consider, especially with xmltv grabbers that don't
> provide everything we would like.

Of course the code will not write itself and if this station table idea
works out somebody would have to do it, but at this moment I don't see
any special/more problems with this solution than with the current one
(although there surely are).

I was wondering though, why the need for backwards compatibility?
Doesn't this only complicates the situation unnecessarily? Is there any
reason why a new database (with a station table) should be able to
function with older versions of MythTV? Otherwise I would add this
remark related to the items I marked with (*) : this could be handled by
the database updater.

> 
> David

-Tako