[development] Object caching

[Larry Garfield]

On Saturday 22 July 2006 16:19, Khalid B wrote:

> I don't think it is bad denormalization in this case.
>
> What we have now is a one to many relationship of node  -> alias, and
> we allow multiple aliases for the same node.
> 
> If we go to a 1:1 relationship, then the logical place for the alias is in
> the object that it represents (term, user, node), and this would speed
> up things for certain operations (e.g. emitting an alias instead of
> the native path), but potentially slow others (looking up an incoming
> alias and converting to the native path?)
>
> What we lose here is the ability for multiple aliases.


I don't see how we do.  It just declares one alias "primary".  

That is, if node 5 has an alias of my/fifth/node in the node table, that is 
the alias that is used for any output.  Vis, system-generated links to node/5 
are always rewritten to my/fifth/node.

The separate alias table then is for *incoming* paths.  You can have as many 
aliases for a page as you want for incoming requests, but only one for Drupal 
output.  (And really, why would you want to have multiple aliases that get 
printed by Drupal?  That only confuses people.)

As an example, suppose you have a weekly newsletter, with each newsletter 
being a node.  The alias for each newsletter would be its date, say 
newsletter/2006-07-22.  That's the primary alias, and that's in the node 
table.  Then there's also an alias newsletter/latest that points to whichever 
is most recent (updated however), which you can put into mailings and such.  
Once the user's there, however, there's no reason to not send them to the 
dated alias.  

So we're not losing multi-alias support at all, at least not really.

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, 
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to 
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession 
of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."  -- Thomas 
Jefferson