[ic] Subcatalogs and SQL databases

Thomas Weiss pater.noster at gmx.net
Mon Nov 24 19:57:02 EST 2003


Hi folks,

I've been playing around with using Interchange with subcatalogs and SQL
databases and a few questions have arisen.

Mainly I'm trying to build a subcatalog which is sharing everything
except the various databases with the main catalog. I'm currently using
Interchange 4.9.9.

I've been using the following config for the subcatalog:

# BOC
ParseVariables Yes
Message __UNDEFINED_VARIABLE__

ProductDir subcats/testsub1/products
VariableDatabase variable

ifdef PGSQL
DatabaseDefault NO_ASCII_INDEX 1
include dbconf/pgsql/pgsql.cfg
endif
# EOC

The strange thing is that the message directive must be there in order
for the setup to work. Or more exactly the undefined variable must have
been interpolated. If I leave it out or unset ParseVariables the
variables defined in the variable database (the subcatalog's one) will
not be available inside the configuration file and so the database setup
will fail. Is this a bug or is this a feature? And if it is a feature
could someone please provide me with some background?

The next question is about importing databases from the text files.
Interchange has correctly (for the main catalog) used the sql database
I have configured it to use and on first start created some tables
inside it from the databases in the products directory. But I wonder
if there is a way to tell Interchange explicitly to recreate the tables
in the SQL database. As far as I understand the documentation states
the tables will (possibly) be recreated if the files inside the products
directory change. But issuing a "touch products/*" does not cause
Interchange to recreate the tables. Neither does dropping the tables
inside the SQL database manually, which just results in the database
server complaining about accessing non-existant tables. So how
exactly does Interchange decide when to recreate the tables?

Also I wonder if it is possible to have Interchange automatically
import data for a subcatalog. With the above setup it won't even try to
import data into the SQL database. Loading a page from the subcatalog
simply results in an SQL error.

I would be glad if someone could give me a hint or some pointers into
the right direction.

Thanks,
Thomas Weiss


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