I’m pleased to announce that the MusicBrainz dev team just completed the Release Candiate 2 release of the MusicBrainz Server Next Generation Schema!
We’ve loaded the latest data (2011-3-19) and converted it to NGS and loaded it onto our test server — please come take a look! Also note: This is going to be the last official release before we push NGS live! Please take a look at NGS and tell us about things that you think will not work. This may be your last chance before it gets real! Any bugs/problems you find, please report them to our bug tracker and mark the bugs for the fix version of NGS Final.
To see the list of issues/bugs that we’ve closed for this release, please take a look at our list of closed bugs for RC2.
We’ve turned on the EditBot on this server and it will send you mail if you give it your email address. We have reset all of the email addresses today, so if you’ve given the test server your email before and confirmed it, you will need to do that again. Sorry!
We had one minor data migration piece that wasn’t completed before the RC2 deadline, so we’re actually going to convert and re-load the data one more time in a couple of days. Once that happens, we will turn on the NGS replication stream again, but for the next 2 days there will be no replication packets coming from the test server.
Also, next week we will load NGS onto our newly purchased hardware so we can do some actual load testing to make sure the new site doesn’t tip over when we switch over. This should be really exciting to see! 🙂
Thanks to everyone who worked on this release! We’re all getting excited about NGS coming soon!
MetaBrainz Blog 
Having some problems using the NGS VM thats been released. Can’t seem to get it to import under any emulator (VirtualBox or VMWare)
Mick: Did you decompress the file first?
See our instructions on this topic:
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/NGS_Server_Setup
Yes, I decompressed the 7z archive…
VirtualBox does not want to import the ova file. 😦 I’ve followed the instructions as exact.
Mick: Not sure what got corrupted. 😦
I will be putting out new data and a new VM next week. Stay tuned for that — that will be the best course of action.
I’m kind of late to looking through NGS, but it looks fantastic so far, especially compared to the old data model. Couple of questions, though.
a) Why are the new “recording containers” or, tracklists, I guess, called discs in the release edit interface? The “tracklist” tab is an example. This seems like a misnomer, carried over from the old model.
b) When merging releases and choosing whether or not to merge the tracks into a single medium or keep them as separate tracklists within the destination release, there’s no hint as to which release is which when choosing the “New position.” Wouldn’t it make sense to have a dive above each list with the name of the release it used to belong to so you don’t have to know the tracklisting of each disk to know what position it belongs in? (For example, merging releases with multiple discs into one release.) On this note:
c) Why doesn’t the NGS automatically convert old multi-disc releases into the new format, with multiple tracklists under one release, by parsing the release name and ooking for “(disc #)” or “(bonus disc)”? This would save a ton of work.
Sorry, thought of another one:
Does the new data model account for different catalog numbers on different discs or other pieces of media within a release? I know you can add multiple labels and catalog numbers to a release, but this doesn’t tie that catalog number to a specific tracklist or piece of media, does it?
Sorry for the typos in the original post, it was written somewhat hastily. Thanks again for making NGS happen!
Adrian:
a) This is incorrect, and was raised recently in our bug tracker. They should not be called discs, and this will be changed (probably to the more general ‘medium’)
b) I don’t entirely understand this question, but the merge interface is not final. There is a discussion of this at http://codereview.musicbrainz.org/r/1111/
c) It already does, you’re presumably just looking at releases that aren’t linked with the ‘part of set’ AR. For example: http://test.musicbrainz.org/release/04b3ef02-d9bb-47cd-8fb4-d4723eaff475 this is directly after converting old data to NGS.
d) No, this isn’t part of this release. As you said, multiple labels are only attached at the release level for now
Thanks for answering my questions, Oliver.
Regarding (b), I meant that there’s no way to know which tracklist came from which release in the merge interface, unless you know which recordings were on which. There’s no header above each tracklist telling you the old release name, for example.
any news on when the newest NGS server will be release? Looking forward to a non-corrupt NGS vm! 🙂
We’re still finding minor bugs that cause is to re-run the data. And each time we run it it take a few hours to go through the process again. Hopefully towards the end of the week we can nail this.
Stay tuned!
As discussed in http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=14315367, I’m particularly worried that nothing has still been done about http://bugs.musicbrainz.org/ticket/5500 in NGS.
The test server currently has http://test.musicbrainz.org/release/c63df1a7-bc04-473d-b579-74ae3a36bdb6 for example, which has been created by merging two discs together. In current MB (http://musicbrainz.org/release/c63df1a7-bc04-473d-b579-74ae3a36bdb6.html) the two are separate and it is clear who DJ mixed which discs.
At a minimum, can you please stop the import script from merging releases where they have differing DJ mix and compiler ARs? Otherwise information is going to be lost as we move to NGS.
I agree with Andrew – this is indeed very concerning. Countless hours have been spent tidying and fixing DJ mixes across the DB; correcting release/disc artists and such – the loss of information will be very aggravating 😦