[Kstars-devel] GSoC 2012: Project Introduction: Logs and Data

[Aleksey Khudyakov]

On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 6:37 PM, Rishab Arora <ra.rishab at gmail.com> wrote:
> Apologies for the late reply.
> Very short version: http://blog.rishab.in/the-log-viewer/
>
> Yes, I plan to separate the storage of observation logs from SkyObject. From
> my current understanding, KStars currently writes the user log to a file as
> well as stores it in "userlog.dat" when it needs to save data.
> During initialization, the log is read from the text files and stored with
> the SkyObject.
>
> In my proposal, I plan to make a separate database in which I will (along
> with all required information like seeing, equipment etc) store an
> identifier for the star. This identifier could be the 'name' as is being
> used currently, but I plan to use the HD index instead so that the logs
> aren't limited to a set number of stars. Similarly, a unique identifier
> (which will be assigned when I port the DSO catalog to SQLite) will be used.
>
> Using the name will make it work for all the objects it currently supports
> at least.
>
First and obvious problem is then nor name, nor name and HD index are
good identifier for sky object. First most faint stars are nameless, and most of
faint stars even do not have HD index (if we add USNO catalog). And to make
things worse names depend on current language. I think it already caused bugs

So some robust identifier is needed. There is uid method which is remnant of
unsuccessful attempt of creating such id. It's buggy and fairly
bitrotten but can use
it as starting point. There were few discussions about it on the list.