[Bf-committers] Blender-Database Integration

Conti Davide (KLDA 21) davide.conti at credit-suisse.com
Fri Feb 10 13:30:31 CET 2006


Hi Nathan,
ahm.. so I'm not the first one thinking about it....
Ok, leave the jokes.
About the technology: in your link you speak only about the db, 
but you don't discuss the possibility to view the db-contents in a web
server.
(pay however attention, I don't want to say that I wanna rebuild Blender
on a web server).

In particular if I read this:
>The database will mainly hold binary data, ie. the dna of blender data.

>Direct data of structs will generally be put into table members, for
linking data a linking table will be created, 
>so that when specific has been saved to the database, it can be linked
multiple times and with other data. 

I have the impression that you don't want to enter into the data
structure (am I right?)
So in your approach the primary goal is "share" (correct me if I'm
wrong).


My thought was a little bit different.
I was thinking to use some well know MVC LAMP model (in particular I
wanted to try this with Django)
to administrate the blender object database, just as it would be for any
normal database. 
My primary goal is to store, retrieve, share, describe and make version
control of blender objects
so that when I work with blender I need only a minimal set (i.e. the
"working set") of objects of a project,
leaving the rest of the project data in the DB.

Let's take an example wih Meshes: 
- In the DB there can be a table called "Mesh". 
This table has following fields:
"ID"               - internal DBBlender key
"Name"             - Directly taken from Mesh name 
"Description"      - internal BlenderDB object description
"Creation Date"    - date of creation
"Author_ID"        - DBBlender foreign Key to Author list.
"Vertex_ID"        - DBBlender foreign Key to the Vertex Data. 
"Material"         - DBBlender foreign Key to Material Data...
and so on...


On the Web Server one could have for example following functions:

ViewMesh: with this function users could see some attributes of the mesh
	in text format, like description, name, version number, etc. We
could also add function which
	calculates at run-time some parameters like #Vertexs, size etc.
And the usual ones
GetMesh 	- read 
PutMesh 	- store
SearchMesh  
...

Finally there could be some API to let Blender communicate directly with
the DB.

So schematically one could use following architecture


________________
|               |
| WEB SERVER    |
|_______________|
      |
      |
" Administer, Share, 
  Retrieve, Store, Search"
      |
______|_________                          ______________
|               |                         |            |
| DATABASE      |<----DbBlender   API --->| BLENDER    |
|_______________|       "Use"             |____________|
      

What do you think about it?
(By the way if you have problem with my english switch to italian!) 

Regs,
Davide.

-----Original Message-----
From: bf-committers-bounces at projects.blender.org
[mailto:bf-committers-bounces at projects.blender.org] On Behalf Of Nathan
Letwory
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 12:18 PM
To: bf-blender developers
Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Blender-Database Integration

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/DbBlender - currently
on
hold, but with every intention to continue at some point.

/Nathan

On Pe 10.2.2006 11:46, Conti Davide (KLDA 21) kirjoitti:
>
> Dear Blender Developer Team,
> I thought about the possibility to integrate Blender with a database
and
> a LAMP architecture.
> I got this idea when I started to work with a lot of objects.
> In this case it's somehow unpractical to use just Blender
> functionalities (layers, Outline Views, etc...) to retrieve and modify
> objects.
> More efficient would it be to store all objects, meshes and so on
> directly in a database.
> What about using also a Web Server as a 2nd help to administer (and to
> share) meshes, matreials and whatsoever through the Web?
> What do you think about it?
> I saw a post
>
http://download.blender.org/documentation/oldsite/oldsite.blender3d.org/
> 21_Blender%20news%20Python%20Export%20Scripts.html
> but it seems like to be dead (lot of links don't work).
> So can somebody tell me what and if something is going on in this
> direction?
>
> If no official project has still started, I can open one myself.
> I could offer few of my time at the evening (which is not a lot), to
> develop and test this idea, I would however use a MAMP (not a LAMP)
> architecture (MAMP=Mac, Apache, Mysql and Python).
> So I would need at some time, some help to test on other systems...
>
> About myself here my skills:
> DBs: good knowldege.
> Scripting Languages: good knowldege (Perl).Intermediate Python.
> IT Projects: good knowldege.
> Web Server: intermediate
> Blender: intermediate
> 3D Graphics: intermediate
>
> Regs,
> Davide.
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-committers mailing list
> Bf-committers at projects.blender.org
> http://projects.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>


/Nathan

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