1. Posted by Magnamus on Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:40:18

    Hi,

    I'm writing a masterloot/dkp addon.

    So far it's going great! The only thing I have left to add is DKP synchronisation between guild officers (only guild officers actually maintain the dkp).

    I was intending that on login, officers would check that their data is up-to-date by communicating with other logged-in officers. They are members of a password-protected admin channel, and communication will be via SendAddonMessage.

    But, as this is my first major addon, I'm not sure of the best way to do this.

    I guess the joining officer would broadcast something on the lines of "This is the data I have, what am I missing?" to the channel moderator (who hopefully will be the oldest member, so most likely to be up-to-date but I'm just guessing here). There would also need to be communication in the other direction, in case the joiner has more data than the logged-in admins. And, the addon maintains dkp and gold costs, so these would need to be synchronised also.

    So I guess I just want to know the best way to do this. Am I on the right lines? What pitfalls should I watch out for?

    Thanks...

  2. Posted by Magnamus on Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:40:18

    Hi,

    I'm writing a masterloot/dkp addon.

    So far it's going great! The only thing I have left to add is DKP synchronisation between guild officers (only guild officers actually maintain the dkp).

    I was intending that on login, officers would check that their data is up-to-date by communicating with other logged-in officers. They are members of a password-protected admin channel, and communication will be via SendAddonMessage.

    But, as this is my first major addon, I'm not sure of the best way to do this.

    I guess the joining officer would broadcast something on the lines of "This is the data I have, what am I missing?" to the channel moderator (who hopefully will be the oldest member, so most likely to be up-to-date but I'm just guessing here). There would also need to be communication in the other direction, in case the joiner has more data than the logged-in admins. And, the addon maintains dkp and gold costs, so these would need to be synchronised also.

    So I guess I just want to know the best way to do this. Am I on the right lines? What pitfalls should I watch out for?

    Thanks...

  3. Posted by jnwhiteh on Sun, 14 Sep 2008 04:43:31

    Well writing a distributed database is an extremely complex matter, but in essense what you need to do is invent some sort of versioning mechanism that allows someone to indicate what "version" of the data they have.  Then it's a matter of communicating that data when someone requests it.  However, you had odd cases such as this:

    Imagine when the officers are online, the clients "elect" a leader who is responsible for tracking and sending out updates while everyone is offline.  Imagine further that new elections are held when the state of the officers change (i.e. someone new shows up, is online, etc).  This mode of operation is extremely easy (how to get new updates sent out).  The difficulty is getting the most recent information "merged" together.

    I would look into the topic of distributed databases online, since those resources will give you the basic operational information you're looking for (you would then just need to alter it to fit the context of WoW).

    Sorry I can't offer any specific advice at this time..

  4. Posted by Magnamus on Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:02:21

    No need for an apology - actually that is really good advice.

    I hadn't considered electing a data master. I'll have a go at that.

    When I have a working solution I'll post the results here; maybe it will help others, or, maybe someone will find a better system :)

    Thanks again!