Oracle's increment/id thingie

I think I jumped the gun yesterday complaining about Oracle and it's "last inserted id" issues. Turns out there is sort of something I can do. "Life after Coffee" has explained a way I can do it, but I'm not quite to the part where I need it yet, so have not tested it in action. His method of doing the sequence/trigger auto increment worked, so I'm fairly certain the method he explained will work. Basically you get the "current value" of the sequence.. after the trigger gets the "next value" to insert as the auto increment. Fancy!

I managed to consolidate a list of 16 ratings (some old, some new, some wrong) down to 6. It was confusing for people inserting content, as they weren't sure which to pick (difference between Unrated or Not Rated).

On Monday I should be able to get content started on actually moving the data. There are over 4000 titles in our movie and tv database, so it's going to be a long process for whoever has to eyeball every single title. A lot of data will have to be entered after the move. I've created tables to hold episodic data for TV series, which previously wasn't kept in the site database. Stargate is easy, as I can run a dump from that site database and import it straight. TV Shows like the Outer Limits, Dead like me, Poltergeist are going to be tougher, as I'm not even sure if we HAVE all the data for them. Since "owning" and having rights for in entertainment can be really hazy, I've designed the new database to have at it's core only what MGM actually owns. An additional structure will exist for all the titles MGM has rights for (for example Reno911, Chappelle's Show which we have rights for syndication).

I printed out the database design a couple weeks ago when I thought it was finalized. I've changed it so much in the past week, my printout is now too old. Even with a tiny font, it takes four pages taped together to see the whole schema. :D

All quiet on the Stargate front today. Some comments on comments:

Kristen: I emailed your comment to everyone in my team, as we mostly only hear feedback in a "negative" sense, so they opened my email with the subject "Stargate feedback" with trepidation. Only to be pleasantly surprised by your comment! We plan on printing it out and framing it. ;) (only half joking!). As far as the problems with the video, all I've been told is: It works in Quicktime 7. I mentioned you'd updated your quicktime fully, so I'm not sure, but they are looking into it further. Can you try and open the direct url to it?

watcher652: I'll pass on your ideas for more Stargate stuff to marketing. I'd love more stickers and stuff! Everything in my cube aside from the posters from Comic-Con I brought in myself. I even have a "Joe" corner, with the signed photo (that I bought off ebay..) and two of the posters from Stargate magazine.

Morjana: Blow up enterprise's! That sounds brilliant! We should make blow up stargate's.. like.. life sized.. ooooooo! I'll ask the marketing people about the Team Stargate survey.. did that go out already? I didn't see an email. Strange!

Elyse: Stargate site won't be affected at all, it's got a nice brand new system database and all I designed for it last year. MGM had an old messy, badly planned database that I didn't have time to redesign when I moved the site about a year ago. We were in such a hurry we used the same schema when we switched from Sybase to Oracle. It's FUBAR! The front end is definitely changing for MGM.com.. to something usable, with actual content *gasp*

Pedantic Bohemian: Web Dev's and fangirls unite! :D





BFN