[Biocorba-l] Database versioning

[Ewan Birney]

On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Alan Robinson wrote:

> 
> On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Ewan Birney wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Brad Chapman wrote:
> > 
> > > Alan:
> > > > Btw, the version number of a database - should it be a 'string' or an
> > > > 'integer'??? Currently, it's the latter - But I'm now not so sure if
> > > > that's appropriate...
> > 
> > I am a big believe that version numbers should be integers such that you
> > know that if you have version 1 and version 2 you should look at version
> > 2.
> 
> I agree absolutely - Unfortunately, the reality doesn't appear to be like
> that. The GenBank and EMBL databases are well behaved in this respect.  
> But, for example, what versioning would you use on Ensembl? I know the
> current setup for the software/data is described as "Ensembl 0.7.5 with
> the September 5th dataset". Is there a database version stored somewhere
> else?

each *database entry* has a well behaved, integer version. 

shame on you to think otherwise.


> 
> 
> (N.B. There is a get out clause in the IDL documentation that states if
> the version is unspecified, then the latest version is to be returned).
> 
> 
> Alan.
> 
> 
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