Modify Database Location (1 Viewer)

[mickyblue]

Hi Absolutly love this plugin, is probably now the most used part of MP at my place along with MyTV and MyVideos.

one small problem i have is i have 3 different Mendia centres running MP throughout my house, and i would love them all to share the one instance of the database so that i know what episodes ive watched and havn't watched, No matter what TV im sitting in front of, they all look to my file server (windows 2003 Server) for the content but i have to update the 3 databases manually for shows watched etc.

is there anyway i can point all three of my installations to use the one Tv_Series database.

if not how hard would it be to add this as a feature in a upcoming release

Keep up the most excellent work

Mickyblue

 

[Inker]

Well, SQLLite really isn't made for concurrent acess as far as I know, so I can see this causing major trouble if more than one HTPC is running. It is a good point though and an interesting idea.

 

[mickyblue]

is there anything we could do to have such a feature, the more MP gets out there you are more than likely going to find more and more people with multiple media centres in there homes.

i havent done any work with databases in 5 years or so, so do not know enough about the current options avaiable but if i can help in anyway just ask.

Mickyblue

 

[Inker]

Well, you have to think about what are the options. Assuming SQLLite does not allow for concurrent acess, the only other option seem to be "real" database servers such as mySQL/msSQL. It is really a strech to ask users to install such a system for a simple plugin.

HOWEVER, seeing how TV3 is already requirering a database server, I would imagin once the majority of people is running it, one plugin after the other will switch over to giving users the option of using centralized storage.

For the moment, all I can offer you is a way to set the db. location, so you could set it to a UNC share or something so you could test it. Perhaps SQLLite doesnt behave so badly in reality. Would you be willing to test this?

 

[mickyblue]

Well, you have to think about what are the options. Assuming SQLLite does not allow for concurrent acess, the only other option seem to be "real" database servers such as mySQL/msSQL. It is really a strech to ask users to install such a system for a simple plugin.

HOWEVER, seeing how TV3 is already requirering a database server, I would imagin once the majority of people is running it, one plugin after the other will switch over to giving users the option of using centralized storage.

For the moment, all I can offer you is a way to set the db. location, so you could set it to a UNC share or something so you could test it. Perhaps SQLLite doesnt behave so badly in reality. Would you be willing to test this?

Inker

If you could point me in the direction of where i can change the db. location i would be more than happy to test this for you.

and if worst case scenerio happens and it doesnt like concurrent access im sure it wont be long befor TV3 and its attached database server become much widly used we can then look at this issue again.

Mickyblue

 

[cold_realms]

Just adding my voice in approval of this idea. My server currently handles 6 locations in my home and would be great to have one unified TV db.

 

[tox]

I also use multiple clients and would be very happy to see this feature. My Mediaportal database, thumbs and configuration settings are already running quite happily on my file server via a mapped network drive so far. A central database for this plugin really would be the icing on the cake.

 

[seven5]

could you share out your MediaPortal directory, and have all the clients actually LAUNCH the binary from that share? Kind of like NFS style on UNIX?

Then they'd all be using the same version, db, and plugins. and maintenance would be very low. Update one computer, and the're all updated.

I'm not much of a windows user though, but i imagine registry issues might be exposed?

 

[seven5]

oh.... but i TOO would love to see this, but i think this is is more of a MP CORE problem to solve than a plugin problem.

We all have our media on centrally located servers for a reason. so all media centers can get the content. It seems silly to have to maintain each client separately.....

 

[zeflash]

Hi everyone, I see this project is still alive (maybe I'll try to get back in at some point ... I don't really have much time these days).

About the shared DB, I did some tested locally (being able to select a shared drive to host the DB, put the banner folders relative to this file) in order to have simultaneous access to it.

Sadly it's not working well at all.
First problem is performance issues; even though I'm on a gigabit network, it takes 10 times longer to display the tree architecture on the setup part of the plugin when the DB is on a network. It's a bit less visible while inside MP, but still painfully slower than with a local DB.

Second problem, which is much worse, is that I was getting corruption in the DB (reason unknown, but I'm guessing network failures translating to failed write operations). So at some point, the DB is busted and has to be recreated from scratch, which kinda misses the whole point.

So, IMO this way of doing it is a dead end. Now, the thing is, the only interesting part here is to share the viewed flag. Nothing prevents us from storing this flag outside of the DB, as a file along the series. That's probably what I'll do next, whenever I'll manage to find some free time (for coding, which isn't the priority anymore now!)