Adding CD tracks to xPLRio.net database

[Rob West]

Tony,

First of all - thanks for all your hard work on xPLRioNet. It's absolutely
excellent!!!

In order to save ripping time and gigabytes of space I am planning to
integrate my CD collection into my Rio setup. The CDs in question are
housed
in a Sony "megachanger" which is controllable via xPL (or at
least it will
be when I finish xPL-enabling my Nirvis Slinke - www.nirvis.com).

My theory is that by piping the output of the CD changer to a Shoutcast
server I should be able to listen to CD and MP3 tracks on my Rios by
toggling between the xPLRioNet and Shoutcast streams. Unless you're already
planning on adding xPLRioNet functionality to stream from a live source :-)

The question is - what's the best way to integrate my existing CD database
with the xPLRioNet database, so that I can search and select tracks/albums
"transparently"?

In order to merge the data, I will need to add two new data items:

(a) A means of locating a CD in the changer. Logically, this is an
album-level attribute that could be achieved by adding a
"Location" column
to the Albums table.

(Alternatively I could work around creating a new column by using the
existing "Path" column in the Tracks table and replicating the
information
for every track on the same album.)

(b) A means of differentiating between CD tracks and ripped tracks.
Logically this is also an album-level attribute and could be achieved by
adding a "Media" column to the Albums table.

(Once again, in order to retain compatibility with a "standard"
xPLRioNet
database, a CD could be detected by the absence of a "Filename" -
this would
also save looking up the album every time a track is selected.)

Either way, there are a couple of potential stumbling blocks:

(a) Running the scanner. Is it possible to force the scanner to ignore
albums/tracks that have been marked as CD? Would you be willing to make
such
a change?

(b) Using the rio.htm interface. This is not a problem for me as I will be
using my own interface - probably in PHP/Apache, but that's another
story.... However, if it's possible to have rio.htm ignore albums/tracks
that have been marked as CD too, then I wouldn't complain :-)

In summary, should I add new columns or reuse existing columns? Would
either
method cause any other problems that I haven't thought of?

Regards,

Rob.