[Digikam-users] How to move a digikam collection

[Peter Albrecht]

On 28.07.2012 17:27, Jean-François Rabasse wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Jul 2012, Thomas wrote:
>> Please, is there any way I can just recover all my digikam
>> tags from
>> the DB, so that I can import them into a new digikam DB?
>>
>> This stuff needs to be robust. It takes huge amounts of
>> work to tag
>> so many photos. We cannot let users lose important data
>> like this.
> 
> I fully agree with the fact that tagging, documenting,
> geolocating
> images is a bunch of work. More, I think this work is
> expected to have
> a VERY long lifetime. (As for myself, I consider that
> lifetime should
> be « forever », same as the images themselves.)
> 
> Given that, my *personal opinion* is that a database is of
> no use for
> that. Database schemes evolve with applications versions and DB
> engines versions and there's no chance that your SQLite3
> Digikam DB of
> today could still be valid in 20 years from now. And what
> about the
> case you change your images management software some day !
> 
> For me, databases are only « work data », to allow an
> application
> doing fast search and filtering tasks via SQL selection
> requests.
> It's not an archival system at all and it should be expected
> to be
> rebuilt from scratch, provided the informations are saved
> somewhere
> under a more robust format.
> 
> And (always my personal opinion) that's why I do write
> metadata into
> the images files, EXIF/GPSsubIFD for geolocation infos, and
> XMP for
> other metadata. And I want to believe I'll still be able to
> read/extract that, even in 10 or 20 years. I don't trust xmp
> sidecar
> files, not standard at all between applications even today.
> 
> My bet is that at any time, any metadata reading program
> could allow
> extracting the informations to reinject into some other system,
> be it in 2015, or 2025, or 2035 ...
> But this is only a personal point of view, probably this is an
> interesting discussion topic : what reliable solutions to
> answer the
> good initial question « What about my metadata in 20 years ?
> » :-)
> 
> Regards,
> Jean-François

Those are exactly my thoughts about storing metadata!
I couldn't have expressed it in better words! ;)

No real contribution to this thread, but you are not alone
Jean-François. ;)

Regards,
	Peter