[rrd-developers] Re: rrd comments

[Tobias Oetiker]

Today Richard A. Steenbergen wrote:

>
> On Sun, 9 Dec 2001, Laurie.Gellatly at netic.com.au wrote:
>
> > This question has been asked before. The answer from Tobi was, in
> > brief, why not put this kind of information into a simple support file
> > as it does not directly change any aspect of how the RRD was
> > maintained or the data in it accessed. The other side of the argument
> > goes : because there is not much data and it is directly related to
> > the RRD it would be nice to keep it in the one file. The outcome... do
> > you see any of these things in an RRD today? And, of course, you are
> > free to make changes to the file layout for your own use.
>
> Well, just because you CAN ghetto-hack around the lack of ability to
> describe your data doesn't mean you SHOULD. :) I can see an argument being
> made about it breaking compatibility with the existing rrd structs, but
> since it appears that has been done already in the devel version, what
> better time to add it.
>
> In order to prevent such problems in the future, it might make sense to
> lay out the data structs with a Type-Length-Value system which would allow
> adding of new data types without breaking compatibility.

Hi Richard,

The way to go about this would be to switch rrdtool over to a more
flexible header format ... using accessor functions to isolate the
code in rrdtool from the structure of the header, and also make the
haeder more flexible when it comes to extensions ... so instead of
having header format versions, it would rather be a matter of
checking which features are used in the rrd file at hand and if
your copy of rrdtool supports these ... with such a change the
addition of comments and other info would be simple ... check the
archive of the developer mailinglist and if so inclined write
aproposal to the developer mailinglist ...

cheers
tobi

>
>

-- 
 ______    __   _
/_  __/_  / /  (_) Oetiker, ETZ J97, ETH, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
 / // _ \/ _ \/ / phoneto:+41(0)1-632-5286  faxto:+41(0)1-632-1517
/_/ \.__/_.__/_/ mailto:oetiker at ee.ethz.ch http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker


--
Unsubscribe mailto:rrd-developers-request at list.ee.ethz.ch?subject=unsubscribe
Help        mailto:rrd-developers-request at list.ee.ethz.ch?subject=help
Archive     http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/rrd-developers
WebAdmin    http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~slist/lsg2.cgi