Topic: Bonk or any other SQL Guru

[FPF-DieHard]

I need a utilty that can convert Flatfile to SQL and back.  Dark Elf has such on animal so I know it exists but he is MIA . . .

Anything exist already that I just don't know about?

[Bonk]

I need a utilty that can convert Flatfile to SQL and back.  Dark Elf has such on animal so I know it exists but he is MIA . . .

Anything exist already that I just don't know about?

As far as I know DarkElf's converter only reads portions of the flatfile for conversion to SQL for webmap use, no conversion back to the flatfile.

That is a major project, it would take me a long time to get anywhere on it (busy at the moment). Why do you desire a converter? Why not just edit the flatfile? Dave might look at adding to EDDBEDIT when he gets back. I can give him a hand with the stores blob if needed (where he's hung up on editing ships). If Dave does not improve his editor I'll take a stab at producing one over the next year or two.

The shipcachevector is still a mystery to me and is required to edit a players ship, so a live shipyard is still required to give ships to players.

I am still incredibly mystified that the flatfile structure is not fully known and there are holdovers from it in the SQL db. Since Taldren developers claimed they had no idea of the flatfile structure (very, very odd... I still don't really believe it...) I suggest that Quiksilver and MicroQuill will need to be consulted to fully decode the flatfile without any guesswork.

I know someone has the flatfile structure... the interesting question is what will they do with it? Why are they still holding it? Who is it?

Arrg! memory managers...  ... DIY and you won't end up with a mess like this.

I may eventually try disassembling the serverkit fully to try and determine how exactly it manages data, I suspect we may be able to access it in memory and make edits to the live server?

Perhaps its time to write a letter to Erik...

[FPF-DieHard]

I pretty much just need what DE's decoder does, don't actually need to convert anything back.

[Bonk]

The flatfile decoding used in my flatfile webmap is only far enough along to display map data (which I could dump to an SQL table to recreate the maphex table). I hope to get back to it soon and add the character and ship tables to complete the roster, then the battles records... once complete I can dump it all to SQL, but again it will be a while. Hopefully DE will show up before then.

To be honest I have kind of been putting off any flatfile work as I am still hopeful to get the kit source and get the serverkit working under high load on an SQL db. (like skipping ODBC and connecting to SQL directly, once)