[wdmmg-dev] Proposed model overhaul

Tue Oct 4 10:25:51 UTC 2011

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Martin Keegan <martin.keegan at okfn.org> wrote:
>> Martin and I have been discussing taking all the pending changes to
>> the model and effectively setting a version 2 of the format. This is
>> slightly orthogonal to the backend move but it makes sense to discuss
>> both at the same time.
>>
>> I've now drafted a proposal for a revised model that I'd like comments
>> on but mail is not the right way to transfer it, so here's a gist:
>> https://gist.github.com/1261271 (feel free to fork). Please especially
>> comment on the lower section, alternatives.
>
> Friedrich, thanks for the writeup, and posting this.
>
> What is the current theory about how we should handle situations which
> potentially involve multiple measures, e.g.
>
> a payment of 100000, intended 50% for education and 50% for road-building?

I think that if we have such information that is a sign this is not
actually a single entry and instead it should be split up (there are
two transactions hidden here).

> a payment in respect of which we want to record a value in more than
> one currency?

This, otoh, feels like its two ways of looking at the same payment
(i.e. a split between currencies would duplicate the amount in the
DB). One way to type for currency would be to have a flag on the
measure to specify its currency on a per-measure basis, rather than
per-dataset. I actually like this a lot, since it emphasises the fact
that we deal with spending. We now can decide on how specific we want
to be there (i.e. "USD" or "2010 USD" or "31.12.2009 USD").

- Friedrich