Which area should a ask dev questions advice about ad.exe ?

antz · September 6, 2012

i'm looking into modifying and extending ad.exe, but i also want input and advice from others.

What area should i be posting in, since although its not part of the mangos core and not really regarded a a 3rd party addon ?

Unkle Nuke · September 6, 2012

Since we lack a much needed "General Development" section in the forums, you may wish to post discussion and questions for development projects in the appropriate server development section for which your patch would apply.

If it is meant to apply to all the server versions, then the Cafe will be fine as it is meant for general chat and posts that don't quite fit anywhere else.

Sorry about the confusion, but I'm glad you asked.

The MaNGOS Community forums, like the server projects, are still a work in progress. We are operating with only one admin on duty, and he's also busy herding cats as Lead Developer, so it is taking longer to sort the forums, add new features, and fix bugs.

Please bear with us and forgive any shortcomings. I promise that we're working hard to make things better, even though it may not happen quickly.

antz · September 6, 2012

Thanks for replying so swiftly... i'll post some stuff shortly (might be tomorrow though).

On another note, I've found 3 quite detailed database diagrams from the TBC era of mangos !

- where / how do i post these, two images and a PDF ?

Unkle Nuke · September 6, 2012

It would be especially useful for TBC devs, so posting it in their development section would ensure the information gets to the right people. That's assuming the technical information isn't too outdated to be useful. MaNGOS has been through some major changes, since the days when TBC was still played on Blizzard's servers.

Even if it is outdated, the information would still be useful to those learning the essentials of server core-database interaction and other concepts. Based on that criteria, it would be good to post it in our university.

Hmmm... I'm not being much help, am I? :lol:

It's a judgement call on your part, based on the assessment of where the information will be most useful and to whom it has the most value.

I suppose you could post it in one place, then put a post in the other which links back to the charts and document. This way, you can make both developers and students aware of the resources while tailoring each post to the intended audience.

And that, good sir, was a scenic trip through the labyrinth of my thought process! No extra charge for the detour through the "Page 3 Girl" section.

antz · September 7, 2012

if there an area or a way of uploading the files to here ?

- if not, can someone suggest (in the nicest possible way) where I should put them ?

antz · September 7, 2012

Right then.... Ideas time....

For the development of AD.exe to produce SQL files i want to remove the actual definitions of the fields / files to be included from the exe itself.

Having seen some other attempts at generating the SQL automatically, i've come up with the following rules:-

If AD.exe is run without it's config file (more on this in a bit), it will generate an SQL file for every DBC file and call the table after the DBC filename. The fields would be named Col1, Col2 etc and it will make a 'best guess' at what the field type should be based on the contents.

If I config file is found, the settings here define what files to generate, what the table should be called, the fieldnames and field type.

Something along the lines of:-

 <Item>
   <include>N</include>
   <tablename>tblItem</tablename>
   <field type="uint" name="id" />
   <field type="uint" name="class" />
   <field type="uint" name="subclass" />
   <field type="int" name="unk0" />
   <field type="int" name="material" />
   <field type="uint" name="displayid" />
   <field type="uint" name="inventorytype" />
   <field type="uint" name="sheath" />
 </Item>

 <ItemDisplayInfo>
   <tablename>tblItemDisplayInfo</tablename>
   <include>Y</include>
   <index>
     <primary>id</primary>
   </index>
   <field type="int" name="id" />
   <field type="string" name="icon" />
 </ItemDisplayInfo>

In the above example...

Item.DBC would not be extracted/converted but ItemDisplayInfo would.

The process would create a table called tblItemDisplayInfo with two fields id and icon, it would also set a primary key on the id field.

If we do this right, then AD.exe will not need updating in future (or as we learn more about the contents of the DBC files), we would just need to ammend the config file. As an additional note, all we would need for AD.exe to support all versions of mangos is the correct config file.

(we'll tackle the core changes seperately to this post).

Your thoughts ?

lillecarl · September 7, 2012

Right then.... Ideas time....
For the development of AD.exe to produce SQL files i want to remove the actual definitions of the fields / files to be included from the exe itself.

Having seen some other attempts at generating the SQL automatically, i've come up with the following rules:-

If AD.exe is run without it's config file (more on this in a bit), it will generate an SQL file for every DBC file and call the table after the DBC filename. The fields would be named Col1, Col2 etc and it will make a 'best guess' at what the field type should be based on the contents.

If I config file is found, the settings here define what files to generate, what the table should be called, the fieldnames and field type.

Something along the lines of:-
 <Item>
   <include>N</include>
   <tablename>tblItem</tablename>
   <field type="uint" name="id" />
   <field type="uint" name="class" />
   <field type="uint" name="subclass" />
   <field type="int" name="unk0" />
   <field type="int" name="material" />
   <field type="uint" name="displayid" />
   <field type="uint" name="inventorytype" />
   <field type="uint" name="sheath" />
 </Item>

 <ItemDisplayInfo>
   <tablename>tblItemDisplayInfo</tablename>
   <include>Y</include>
   <index>
     <primary>id</primary>
   </index>
   <field type="int" name="id" />
   <field type="string" name="icon" />
 </ItemDisplayInfo>
In the above example...

Item.DBC would not be extracted/converted but ItemDisplayInfo would.

The process would create a table called tblItemDisplayInfo with two fields id and icon, it would also set a primary key on the id field.

If we do this right, then AD.exe will not need updating in future (or as we learn more about the contents of the DBC files), we would just need to ammend the config file. As an additional note, all we would need for AD.exe to support all versions of mangos is the correct config file.

(we'll tackle the core changes seperately to this post).

Your thoughts ?

Smart, this is prolly the best solution (using XML as config and predefine field types and choose which tables to export)

I hope you succeed with this, will make life easier for everyone

Regards!

FailZorD · September 7, 2012

Good Luck with your idea. It's very smart and intelligent. I hope you will succeed with your idea.

Keep us informed if anything new comes up.

Sincerely,

FailZorD

antz · September 11, 2012

I've made a start with the changes to AD.exe, not much there yet but managed my first mangos fork

https://github.com/billy1arm/server

antz · September 13, 2012

Thought I would provide an update....

Basic SQL generation is now complete

AD.Exe will now generate .SQL files for each DBC and also can now produce .CSV files too.

Milestone one complete

antz · September 14, 2012

had a few minutes of inspiration and added a new switch which will generate a basic XML config file based on the DBC files you have.

- Quite helpful for initially setting up the config file.

- Redefined the layout of the XML file slightly to allow individual fields to be disabled from the import into the DB.

- Also moved hardcoded values out of the application and into the config files

The XML currently looks like this:-

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
   <Config>
       <Lang_Count>12</Lang_Count>
       <Languages>"enGB", "enUS", "deDE", "esES", "frFR", "koKR", "zhCN", "zhTW", "enCN", "enTW", "esMX", "ruRU"</Languages>
       <Min_Supported_Build>15050</Min_Supported_Build>
       <Expansion_Count>4</Expansion_Count>
       <World_Count>2</World_Count>
   </Config>
   <Files>
......snip.......
       <Spell>
           <include>Y</include>
           <tablename>dbc_Spell</tablename>
           <fieldcount>25</fieldcount>
           <field type="bigint" name="col0" include="y" />
           <field type="text" name="col1" include="y" />
           <field type="text" name="col2" include="y" />
           <field type="text" name="col3" include="y" />
           <field type="text" name="col4" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col5" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col6" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col7" include="y" />
           <field type="float" name="col8" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col9" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col10" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col11" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col12" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col13" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col14" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col15" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col16" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col17" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col18" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col19" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col20" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col21" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col22" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col23" include="y" />
           <field type="bigint" name="col24" include="y" />
       </Spell>
   </Files>
......snip.......
</root>

antz · September 29, 2012

if your interested the latest version of my AD.exe modifications is located at :-

git://github.com/billy1arm/server.git

antz · April 2, 2013

This work has spilled over into a new extractor:- MaNGOSExtractor in the mangoszero/tools repo

All the functionality mentioned above and can currently extract all dbc's from any version of wow without modification

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Which area should a ask dev questions advice about ad.exe ?

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