[sldev] Re: [svc] Back end features (was: New viewer released)

[Dale Glass]

On Friday 31 August 2007 21:13:37 you wrote:
> Realistically, I think the best we can do is come up with an API and
> stick it in a JIRA and try to find time to implement it.
Will give it a try

> So, I don't know what a region handle is, but I do think that it's
> likely that you're going to want to cross-reference the four different
> ways of identifying a region: handle, grid x/y, name, uuid.  The
> standard practice is to treat the uuid as the canonical handle for the
> object (be it region, agent, parcel, or object), and provide services
> that convert non-canonical references into canonical ones (e.g. name
> into uuid).  Then you have a generic info request on the canonical object.
My current understanding based on looking at libsecondlife source is that a 
region handle is a 64 bit integer, which encodes the sim's X and Y position, 
with a byte for each, which is weird.

I don't really understand why that is being used instead of simply specifying 
coordinates, or using the key directly, which could always remain static.

> The above probably sounds a bit rambling, but here's the gist of it, in
> rest-style paths that don't correspond to any actual implementation:
>
> /region/named/Name    -> /region/<uuid>
> /region/at/X,Y        -> /region/<uuid>
> /region/handle/Handle -> /region/<uuid>
>
> /region/<uuid>/info   -> {'name': Name, 'grid_x':X, 'grid_y':Y,
> 'handle':Handle, 'estate': <id>, ....  }
>
> So, that's conceptually how I think the data flows should go.
Sounds good to me


> As an aside, do we really keep around the handle on the server side, or
> is it just a convenience for the viewer?  I might be completely
> misunderstanding wtf a handle is, in which case we can just remove it
> from above.
Viewer uses handles a lot, for example object updates are sent with a handle 
and not a region key. Not sure why, compactness maybe? Though why use a 64 
bit number to keep 16 bits of data? While I expect SL will grow beyond 64K 
sims some day, more than 2^32 is something I don't think will happen any time 
soon.

> So, anyway, the immediate use case suggests a larger use case, and it's
> important to implement the former in terms of the latter.
If thinking long term, something to consider would be doing a general sim 
information request instead. If people are going to have bots running through 
the whole grid to collect data, might as well let them have it directly and 
reduce the grid load a bit.
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