[OSM-dev] osmosis utf-8

[Brett Henderson]

Tom Hughes wrote:
> I don't think it's hard to fix - once the data is fixed it is probably
> sufficient to set the default connection character set to UTF-8 and rails
> will use that.
>
> The real problem is that we will need to do a complete dump and reload
> of the database which will take some time...
>
> Tom
Tom, sorry if all these problems always seem to fall on your shoulders 
but as you're the main db dude I'm looking for your direction on this 
one.  Having said that, I'm happy to help in any way I can.  If it comes 
down to a dump/reload and config file update though there's probably 
little I can do.

Are there any upcoming outages for other reasons that can be piggybacked 
on?  Server upgrades, schema updates, etc?

I want to fix it so that daily updates can be relied upon as a mechanism 
for keeping sync'd copies of OSM data.  Without correct data the uses of 
daily diffs are somewhat limited.  But without many current users of 
daily diffs the argument for server downtime is also limited.  A typical 
chicken and egg problem :-)

I'm also trying to figure out where to spend my time.  I can either 
spend time trying to code around the problem which will be effort wasted 
in the long term, or I can begin work on other tools such as automated 
diff appliers or alternative schema implementations.

If there are any upcoming outages in the next month or two then I'm 
happy to wait for that.  If not, my preference is still to fix the data 
but this will be the only reason for the outage.  Presumably with the 
current db size this will require several hours outage.

Cheers,
Brett