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Subject: Re: The Book Problem, Open Book Format proposal, Request for comments.

Author: Mark Boylan

Date: 16:41:42 03/03/06

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A SQL solution for chess databases, engine user interfaces & book building
programs would be ideal. There would be absolutely no need for any kind of
hashing algorithm at that level because the database would handle it. A
varchar(90) key (or whatever the maximum size of a fen is) is nothing for good
database. In fact I've already started to design a SQL game/position database
using fens (with a shorter surrogate key for relations) and I expect it to be
very fast.

But I see two problems.

First is what database to use. I wouldn't want to use a database _server_ for a
single user desktop application, but I guess you could. There are more than a
few embedded databases for Java, and that's what I've cosen for my database
application.

But I wouldn't want any Java in my engine (just my preference). And using an
embedded database (assuming that's the choice) kind of ties you to a language.
I'm not sure what's available for other languages. I think there are xbase-like
databases for C, but they aren't really SQL. In any case, the data files
wouldn't be interchagable among the servers, embedded or otherwise.

But, a book-building program could certainly export a file readable by any
engine, regardless of language or platform. In the end, the engine will probably
just hash the results of the query anyway, no?





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