NYCPHP Meetup

[Paul A Houle]

Randal Rust wrote:
> The trick is that when a new article is added, they system needs to
> automatically go back to all of the existing articles and run through
> this process, which I don't like, because this won't be 100% accurate
> in the editor's eyes. each updated article needs to be reviewed. I
> also think it would cause a performance hit and dramatically slow down
> the system, especially in one installation where we have nearly 4,000
> record that would need to be updated.
>   
    That shouldn't be a problem.  I just a ran a script that updated 
40,000 records (doing something of similar complexity) that completed in 
about 10 seconds.  If it was 4 million records,  then I might worry a 
little about performance.

    If reviewing by editors is important,  you can do this as a workflow 
system.  There's a couple ways to do it,  but basically you scan through 
the database looking for records that your system would like to update:  
rather than updating the actual records,  you insert a row into a table 
that indicates that this item should be reviewed:  the table could have 
a column that holds the new text.

    Then you write a script that shows the editor the first article that 
could be changed:  the editor then has the option to (i) accept the 
change,  (ii) edit the text,  or (iii) not accept the change.

    Currently I'm working on a system where documents get changed by 
automatic processes,  contractors,  employees,  and web users.  There's 
quite a lot of thinking of the above sort in there.