>> I like keeping the queries local. In a sense, the local BugFixArchive
>> object *is* a database, in that it has fairly extensive sorting/querying
>> capabilities, and we can always add more. I also really like that the
>> BFAV creates a local repository with all of the .txt files. If the Bug
>> Fixes Archive server goes down, I still have my local repository to work
>> with. I'm really interested to find out how much this off-line
>> capability matters to other people...

> Yes, working offline is important... for me at last. It's nice
> to be able to kill some time harvesting while e.g. on a train.
> or in the evening in the park... on the other hand, downloading takes
> some time and it might be nice for some people to have a more lightwight
> view on the archive... but this might be not so important.

I agree that being able to work offline is a plus.  From an implementation
perspective, if the users local database were also in Magma, the MagmaSession
itself could act as a substitutable Strategy (i.e., local or remote), allowing
you have just one code-base and user-interface for managing the persistent
portion of the model.

> and I
would want the BFAV user to not have to any work to administer the Magma
database.

There should be no reason remote users would have to do this.

With no user-specific security though, I'm not sure Magma would be suitable for
a public, updatable database.  Someone with malicious intent could easily
replace the root of the repository!  You could still recover the old root, of
course, because most object buffers are not rewritten until the compress
utility is run.  But it would certainly be a headache!

Not that anyone would DO that, of course..   :)

Regards,
  Chris



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