[OSM-dev] how to make way and relation history less expensive

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

Currently if you try to look at the history of a bigger way or
relation (and/or one with many versions) it is most probable that you
run into a timeout. A solution to this would be to not get all the
versions of the object with all components in one rush when you first
click on "way history" (or relation) in the browse-view. Instead there
could be an intermediate step which only showed the date, version
number, editing user (maybe changeset-number where the object was
changed), tags and maybe amount of nodes / members. In a second step
the user could get the details for _one_ of these versions by clicking
on it. This would reduce the load on the api (due to getting all node
coordinates of all contained nodes of all versions) and reduce the
risk of a timeout significantly.

cheers,
Martin