NationStates Jolt Archive

Kinda like the regular memberlist (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/memberlist.php), but to give you number of people in each region, number of UN members in the region and some other useful information I haven't thought of maybe.

What do we think of this? Possibly more like an NS2 thing, I dunno.

According to Sal, the nation data is stored in such a way that makes this very difficult...

Well In the Large regions, an attempt to run the XML datafeed results in <nations>MANY</nations>, which orevents a griefer from writing a script to autoclear say the Pacific, but this would allow them to do just that.

So unless Salusa can find a way around that. . .

I thought that you were starter of the thread where we discussed that Spof. :?

Well In the Large regions, an attempt to run the XML datafeed results in <nations>MANY</nations>, which orevents a griefer from writing a script to autoclear say the Pacific, but this would allow them to do just that.

So unless Salusa can find a way around that. . .

I thought that you were starter of the thread where we discussed that Spof. :?You're forgetting though that I have no understanding of what that means. I'll post what you wrote as I read it.

Well In the Large regions, <techie speak alert> , griefer <techie speak alert><computer language alert>clear the Pacific, but <pronoun1>would allow them to do <pronoun2>.

So unless Salusa can find a way around that. . .

I thought that you were starter of the thread where we discussed that Spof. :?

*thinks* So one one of the hundreds of threads I started must have had some discussion on it I didn't understand*thinks*

Its not your fault or anything, I just don't have the first trail of a clue as to anything even vaugely connected to the subject you're talking about.

According to Sal, the nation data is stored in such a way that makes this very difficult...
See, now that post I understand.


*Watches as someone attempts now to explain Qaaolchoura's post and ends up getting me even more confused*

Well In the Large regions, an attempt to run the XML datafeed results in <nations>MANY</nations>, which orevents a griefer from writing a script to autoclear say the Pacific, but this would allow them to do just that.

So unless Salusa can find a way around that. . .

I thought that you were starter of the thread where we discussed that Spof. :?You're forgetting though that I have no understanding of what that means. I'll post what you wrote as I read it.

Well In the Large regions, <techie speak alert> , griefer <techie speak alert><computer language alert>clear the Pacific, but <pronoun1>would allow them to do <pronoun2>.

So unless Salusa can find a way around that. . .

I thought that you were starter of the thread where we discussed that Spof. :?

*thinks* So one one of the hundreds of threads I started must have had some discussion on it I didn't understand*thinks*

Its not your fault or anything, I just don't have the first trail of a clue as to anything even vaugely connected to the subject you're talking about.

According to Sal, the nation data is stored in such a way that makes this very difficult...
See, now that post I understand.


*Watches as someone attempts now to explain Qaaolchoura's post and ends up getting me even more confused*

]Well in the large regions, an attempt to use the XML datafeed (which is a way of getting information about a region in a way that another program can handle easily) to get the names of all the nations in a large region results in the datafeed simply returning "---MANY---" rather than the names of the nations, which prevents a griefer from writing a program to eject every nation of a region such as the Pacific. However, the idea in the original post would allow the griefers to do these Pacific-clearing scale ejections.

So unless Salusa can find a way around that...

I thought that you were starter of the thread where we discussed that Spof.

From what I garnered from the last time this was discussed, where I spent a page pestering Sal with questions about the data format that NS uses, the problem here is that NS stores data in a bunch of serial tables, rather than any structured relational database. As such, where the forum can generate a memberlist (and order it) by simply running an SQL query, NS would have to be hard-coded to sequentially parse through the data every time, which would create quite a large processor overhead.

From what I garnered from the last time this was discussed, where I spent a page pestering Sal with questions about the data format that NS uses, the problem here is that NS stores data in a bunch of serial tables...
At this point my eyes just glazed over.

I got the gist of it though. Can't be done basicly.

Just as another idea, what about some easier way of viewing the UN compilations? Like, some other way of ordering the list when you press "view all regions" (eg: by size)?

Just as another idea, what about some easier way of viewing the UN compilations? Like, some other way of ordering the list when you press "view all regions" (eg: by size)?

Would be subject to exactly the same problem.

How about converting the whole of NS to an SQL based database? :P

Edit: Oh, and while you're at it, convert the display to XML/XSLT, just for good measure

Didn't Sal do something sorta like this for the NS census?

Just as another idea, what about some easier way of viewing the UN compilations? Like, some other way of ordering the list when you press "view all regions" (eg: by size)?

Would be subject to exactly the same problem.

How about converting the whole of NS to an SQL based database? :P

Edit: Oh, and while you're at it, convert the display to XML/XSLT, just for good measure

<--- head explodes

Just as another idea, what about some easier way of viewing the UN compilations? Like, some other way of ordering the list when you press "view all regions" (eg: by size)?

Would be subject to exactly the same problem.

How about converting the whole of NS to an SQL based database? :P

Edit: Oh, and while you're at it, convert the display to XML/XSLT, just for good measure

<--- head explodes

I have to agree with you there. Very confusing indeed!!

Didn't Sal do something sorta like this for the NS census?

He collated a whole load of data from a scan and organised it into a database... it would be many months out of date by now.

He collated a whole load of data from a scan and organised it into a database... it would be many months out of date by now.

Well, data like this is always going to be out of date because everything is always constantly changing.

Didn't Sal do something sorta like this for the NS census?

He collated a whole load of data from a scan and organised it into a database... it would be many months out of date by now.How does the scan work?

Didn't Sal do something sorta like this for the NS census?

He collated a whole load of data from a scan and organised it into a database... it would be many months out of date by now.How does the scan work?

Not a clue. I assume Sal does something through the commandline on the server.

Didn't Sal do something sorta like this for the NS census?

Salusa commented once that he had the only SQL DB containing NS data. Presumably he grabbed this by writing a program that parsed through the tables and formed them into standard mySQL (or other variant) tables. As Myrth said, however, this would probably be well out of date, and I assume it's not an easy conversion, hence the lack of an updated version

Ooh...I wish I could add something here, but this is not my area of expertise. :oops: I feel very stupid trying to understand what has been written. :lol:

I may as well reveal some of my secrets to the world.

I get a full copy of the NS nation data on a monthly basis. About 1 day worth of processing (of which 3-4 hours need to be surpervised) is required to parse the data files, at which point the data is in a FlashFiler database (open source DB development kit for anyone interested). I use this for the next month (sometimes with minor updates) for certain of my tasks.

The only reason that a Census has not come out recently is due to the amount of work that I've had with other things, both NS, and RL. It's a been a long several months.