[mythtv] Development to-do list question -- protocol

[Isaac Richards]

On Tuesday 01 November 2005 01:01 am, David Shay wrote:
> Question to Isaac, et. al.
>
> With respect to the item around changing the protocol.  I would be
> willing to help with this item and have started some research into
> dbus.  Before digging much deeper, though, I'm wondering what your
> thoughts are on having two different protocols -- one for high-volume
> data transfers where video data is being transferred and the other for
> all of the other portions of the protocol -- scheduled recording lists,
> tuner status, etc.

Retrieving settings from the database is a high-volume situation for the 
frontend in many situations.  So is reading things like the seek table..  

> One of your consistent comments about using an XML based protocol has
> been that this would be inefficient where there are hundreds of calls
> per second.  By splitting the protocol, you could use an efficient
> protocol for the relatively stable file-transfer functions, but an
> XML-based flexible one for the more evolving portions.  An XML approach
> would allow other applications to be more resilient to minor protocol
> changes, like adding a field to the ProgramInfo structure, since it
> could just ignore items it wasn't prepared to deal with.

'just ignore items it wasn't prepared to deal with' doesn't work in the real 
world.  Most of the changes to the programinfo structure recently have been 
things that _cannot_ be ignored.

No xml in the protocol.  It's not fit for things that must be done quickly.

Isaac