[OSM-dev] [OSM-talk] API 0.5 is on the way

Raphael Jacquot sxpert at sxpert.org
Tue Sep 11 07:34:55 BST 2007


Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Nodes and their history remain unchanged, but the history information 
> linked to segments and ways will be removed in the process. This is 
> unavoidable since the new model is structurally different from the old 
> model, and many historic ways simply cannot be represented in the new 
> model. 

ah, yes, this takes care of the ways with nooks & cranies ...

> Current ways will be split into several parts where the new model cannot
> accomodate their complexity, but converting historic ways would not 
> only be a computational challenge (we would have review all historic
> versions of a way and its segments and merge them into individual historic
> ways), it would also falsify history because we would have to split 
> ways that were not split in the past. (The only correct solution would
> be to somehow return historic ways in 0.4 format and new ways in 0.5 
> format but that would be a nightmare for clients and servers alike.) 

good. those ways were a pain ;D

> We will investigate ways to make the existing database available in a 
> read-only fashion in order to allow access to pre-0.5 history: In any 
> case the existing history data will be archived; nothing will be lost.
> 
> Almost everything you need to know about 0.5 is on the wiki page:
> 
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php?title=OSM_Protocol_Version_0.5

it's missing loads of info, notably about the protocol. it would be nice 
if this was somehow filled in





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