[OSM-dev] Distributed Data Store

Dave Stubbs osm.list at randomjunk.co.uk
Thu Jan 22 11:35:26 GMT 2009


2009/1/22 Scott Shawcroft <scott.shawcroft at gmail.com>:
> Stefan,
> My thoughts are below.
>
> Stefan de Konink wrote:
>> Hey,
>>
>> Scott Shawcroft wrote:
>>> My friend Jason (cced) and I are seniors at the University of
>>> Washington in Computer Science and Engineering.  On your FAQ you say
>>> people interested in distributing the database across multiple
>>> computers should email the list.  Well, here we are.  We are
>>> currently in a distributed systems capstone course during which we
>>> need to spend the quarter (until mid March) on a single substantial
>>> project.
>>
>> Sounds fun :) There are a lot of 'ideas' here around, geographical
>> balancing etc. The standard divide and conquer methods in databases,
>> etc. The main problems in OSM:
>>
>> - Admins don't want to maintain multiple systems
>> - The fear of anything new not developed by the devs (especially if it
>> is not build in Ruby)
> Who are the admins for the systems?  We're open to particular solutions
> and if there is a bias towards Ruby we'd look closer at it.  However, it
> may be that there is a better solution.  Who are the designated devs?


The Ruby thing is just that the current API is written in Ruby on Rails.

Obviously any work you do is most useful if it's applicable to the
systems and data we currently have. If there's reasonable evidence of
a better way of doing something then there's generally no problem in
implementing it. A great example is the GPX importer daemon which was
rewritten in C to make it a lot faster.

The important points are ensuring any new stuff is actually better,
that the admins can reasonably maintain it, and that there's a
sensible strategy to get the data from where it currently is to where
it needs to be.


Dave




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