Question about AFT and duplicate entries

[Jeff Mitchell]

Colin Guthrie wrote:
> Accepting that ATF does not filter out duplicates on the collection
> browser,
AFT.  We'll not hear of ATF again, thank you very much.  :-)

> it becomes possible for me to play two versions of the same
> song from different locations, but for the two (or more) files there
> will only ever be one entry in the uniqueid table.
>   
Yes.  Although you mean, the same song, not two versions of the same 
song, as AFT calculates both on the tag and some part of the actual 
audio information (which is why it's not perfect as it's not *all* the 
audio information, but you'd be hard pressed to find a case where it 
doesn't work properly...and this way is *much* faster than scanning the 
whole file).
> Does this mean that the uniqueid itself is calculated every time a file
> is played?
No.  On scan.
> Is that not a little pointless?
No, because that's not what it does.
> I thiought that the uniquied
> table was used to provide a cache of these values?
Yes.  Without that cache the tracking wouldn't work in the first place.
> In my case it means
> that the one on the network is read.
>   
Specifically, it actually means that the one that is scanned last is the 
URL that will be reflected in the database.

> Would it not make way more sense to remove the unique key on the
> uniqueid field on the uniqueid table? (too many uniques there!!)
>   
What would be the point in having unique values be non-unique?

--Jeff