Server update, 2016-04-04

This is a small bug-fix release while we work on finishing the May schema change update. Thanks go to reosarevok and ethus3h for their patches this time around. The git tag is v-2016-04-04 and you can find the complete changelog below.

Bug

[MBS-8850] – No events tab for tags
[MBS-8861] – Vertical spacing off on editor profile if “last login” is missing (account admins only)
[MBS-8874] – Editing an entity sometimes shows it as a possible duplicate of itself
[MBS-8886] – Header menus should work without JavaScript

Improvement

[MBS-8591] – Increase pagination item count

Server update, 2016-03-21

The most noticeable change in this release is that we’re using Wikidata links to fetch images for any entity that has them. Thanks to Roman Tsukanov for working on this cool new feature! We’ve also made the header menus require clicks to open and close, and fixed several bugs listed below. The git tag is v-2016-03-21.

Bug

[MBS-7914] – alias list not included in track level artist credits when fetching release information
[MBS-8837] – Event edits fail to apply with ERROR: invalid input syntax for type time: “1970-01-01T19:00:00”
[MBS-8848] – Own private collections ignored on entity pages
[MBS-8858] – Edit medium edit stuck trying to use a deleted recording
[MBS-8862] – Search edits: release group condition is broken

Improvement

[MBS-6381] – Use Wikidata URLs to fetch images for entities
[MBS-8843] – Require clicking on the header menus to open them

New Feature

[MBS-6152] – Provide a better way to list private collections in /ws/2/release output

Task

[MBS-8805] – Drop the completely unused pre-NGS tables on totoro

May 2016 schema change release details

In about two months time we’ll have the next schema change release: May 16, 2016. Even after skipping the fall schema change release, this release is going to have few changes that will impact our downstream users. Most of the tickets in this release will make minor improvements to database indexes and edit tables. If you are one of the few users of our edit data, then you should delve deeper into the list of tickets in this release. For everyone else, I will summarize the tickets with a greater impact.

In a previous blog post we also talked about upgrading the minimum required version of postgres. We received no real feedback requesting for us to upgrade to 9.4, but we did receive some feedback that some people would prefer 9.5, which is our preference as well. Based on that feedback, we’re going to make PostgreSQL version 9.5 the minimum required version. If you’d like to run a MusicBrainz replicated instance via our Live Data Feed, you will need to run Postgres 9.5!

The official minimum supported Ubuntu release as of now is still Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) which reached end-of-life a year ago. We will upgrade that to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) at the schema change release. In particular, this means that we might start using Perl 5.18 features in the MusicBrainz Server code (as opposed to Perl 5.10 currently).

We understand that this is potentially a lot of work for some of our users, but occasionally we need to upgrade our requirements. We try and limit these sorts of upgrades as much as possible, so please bear with us.

Finally onward to the details of the release. Please take a look at the list of issues that will be addressed in this release. The few tickets worth discussing in details are:

MBS-8838 – “Add gids to all *_type tables“. This ticket adds MBIDs (GIDs in schema lingo) to all of our tables that define a type for some database element. Given that we recommend that external users never reference our data by row ids, we really need to provide proper permanent MBIDs to all elements of our database.
MBS-6024 – “Support more than one barcode on same release (SQL edition)“. This ticket adds the ability for the database to contain more than one barcode for a given release. However, this ticket does not include the user interface portions of this feature. The team will add the user interface/edit portions of this feature in a later, non schema change release.
MBS-4501 – “Alternative tracklists“. This ticket creates a new feature that would allow an alternative tracklist to be used for a given release. This is a better solution for handling conflicts between our style guidelines and how the data appears on the release. It is also a more elegant solution for translations of releases into different languages.

As usual, we will post final details about the release shortly before the release happens. If you have any questions about this release, feel free to ask specific questions in the tickets or general questions in the comments below.

(Edited 2016-03-16 at 12:55 UTC to add the upgraded Ubuntu requirement.)

Server update, 2016-03-07

This release fixes the web service to support all the new entity types that can be added to collections since the last release, including to support submission, and introduces a few new browse requests (browsing collections by entity gid or editor name; browsing entities by collection gid). These are documented at https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Development/XML_Web_Service/Version_2.

Area pages now have a “Users” tab where you can see other editors from that area, provided they’ve filled out that info in their profile.

A “single sign-on” endpoint has been added for logging into our new community forum, to replace the previous OAuth2 method. The main benefit over OAuth2 is that it now keeps peoples’ usernames and email addresses in sync with their MusicBrainz account.

Thanks to Roman Tsukanov (Gentlecat) and Frederik “Freso” S. Olesen for their work on today’s release. The git tag is v-2016-03-07 and the complete changelog is below.

Bug

[MBS-3125] – collection queries via the webservice are broken
[MBS-5323] – GET request for releases in a collection returns unordered results
[MBS-8459] – WS doesn’t have work collection endpoints
[MBS-8651] – collection add and delete endpoints
[MBS-8652] – PUT requests for invalid webservice collection URLs return the same content as a GET
[MBS-8825] – Links in the header force the default cursor via CSS

Improvement

[MBS-6120] – web service browse release where collection equals mbid

New Feature

[MBS-6152] – Provide a better way to list private collections in /ws/2/release output
[MBS-6511] – Show tab for “editors” on an area page when logged in
[MBS-8839] – Implement Discourse SSO endpoint

Task

[MBS-8841] – Update links to forums
[MBS-8842] – Update Picard’s logo on https://musicbrainz.org/

Server update, 2016-02-22

New Style

The style of the website has changed to use our new logo and better match the rest of the *Brainz family. It may be rough around the edges in some areas, but we’ll continue to make improvements as we receive feedback. Thanks to Roman Tsukanov (Gentlecat) who did all of the initial work on this.

Other Changes

Nicolás Tamargo (reosarevok) has fixed our header menus to be clickable on touch devices, and we have some other fixes and improvements from Ulrich Klauer (chirlu) and myself listed below. The git tag for today’s release is v-2016-02-22.

Bug

[MBS-8007] – Can’t change collection type of existing collection
[MBS-8624] – Components for server-side rendering are not equivalent to TT macros
[MBS-8771] – Contact-URL on start page result in “Page Not Found”
[MBS-8772] – Big Audio Dynamite is high-lighted, but no open edits seem around
[MBS-8776] – JSON-formatted collection release list shows page total and not overall collection total
[MBS-8789] – “{user} has not tagged anything” in user/tags seems broken
[MBS-8801] – “A group of artists cannot have a gender” when removing the gender

Improvement

[MBS-739] – Menu items with dropdowns should not have actions under them (other than the drop down opening)
[MBS-6212] – No link to edit profile on the profile
[MBS-8004] – Extend collections to other entities
[MBS-8787] – Add CORS headers to JSON-LD responses
[MBS-8790] – “ended” shows differently in add and edit relationship edits

Task

[MBS-8778] – Point About → Team to meb.o/team
[MBS-8779] – Restructure footer and add MetaBrainz to it
[MBS-8784] – Add Triple J Unearthed to the Other DBs whitelist

Upgrading Postgres for MusicBrainz Live Data Feed users

We’re slowly approaching that time of year: Schema change release time. After skipping our fall update to focus on some internal tasks, we’re ready to have another schema change release in the spring: May 16, 2016

We have started the process to collect features we wish to release for this schema change release and we’ll be publishing that list in the coming weeks. However, we’re contemplating the impact of one more change we’d like to make: Upgrading to a more recent version of Postgres.

Internally we are going upgrade to Postgres 9.5, which was recently released, so we expect that the Postgres team will have worked out the most significant kinks before we’re ready to move to it. However, even though we are moving to 9.5, we are considering the impact on our downstream users/customers who need to make the same or similar change.

While we are moving to version 9.5 of Postgres, we have the option of only adopting features from Postgres 9.4, which means that our downstream users may continue to use Postgres 9.4. However, Postgres 9.5 has some nice features we’d like to use (e.g. UPSERT), so we’re pondering if it is possible for us to require Postgres 9.5 from all of ours Live Data Feed users starting on May 16, 2016.

We have already informally queried a few of ours users and so far it seems that requiring Postgres 9.5 is feasible. If you are a Live Data Feed user and feel that this requirement of Postgres 9.5 is too much for your and your organization by May 16, 2016, please leave a comment to this blog post!

Server update, 2016-02-08

This update hopefully fixes some issues with “Edit Medium” edits that, in rare cases, resulted in an incorrect track listing. Sometimes tracks were being inexplicably deleted. The git tag for today’s release is v-2016-02-08.

Bug

[MBS-8752] – Database inconsistencies when updating medium
[MBS-8765] – instrument_annotation should not be backed up in mbdump.tar.bz2
[MBS-8770] – Banner not displayed

Task

[MBS-7475] – Get rid of Algorithm::Merge

Server update, 2016-01-25

Backwards-Incompatible JSON Web Service Changes

In an effort to get our JSON Web Service out of “beta” status, we’ve made some backwards-incompatible changes to it in this release:

The video flag on recordings is now outputted as true or false instead of 1 or 0.
Empty relations arrays are not outputted for linked entities anymore, since linked entities never include relationships.
The iso_3166_1_codes, iso_3166_2_codes, and iso_3166_3_codes properties have been renamed to iso-3166-1-codes, iso-3166-2-codes, and iso-3166-3-codes, respectively. This only applies to lookup and browse requests; search requests already outputted these with hyphens.
The iso-3166- properties mentioned in the previous point are not outputted if they’re empty.

Some other changes to the web service have been made, but are considered additions (not changes to existing output), so hopefully shouldn’t cause any problems. You can review them in the changelog below.

Other Changes

An issue where entities deleted from the database (but still present in the cache) remained visible has hopefully been fixed. There are several other miscellaneous bug fixes linked below. Thanks again to Ulrich Klauer for his contributions. The git tag is v-2016-01-25.

Bug

[MBS-5676] – JSON relationships output doesn’t include target-type
[MBS-6166] – Deleted accounts can still have details edited
[MBS-7241] – Non-transactional cache means the cache can sometimes fail to delete entities that are gone at the database level
[MBS-7735] – ws/2: recording’s “video” flag inconsistent between xml and json
[MBS-7921] – Internal server error when requesting /ws/2/isrc as JSON
[MBS-8367] – ws2 JSON incorrectly returns non-included field as null value
[MBS-8396] – JSON output has no ordering key attribute for release group series
[MBS-8563] – Release & Release Group browse requests without type/status filters return results which contradicts the documentation
[MBS-8688] – Random tagged entity type display inconsistency in personal tag page
[MBS-8722] – Edit stuck trying to change the gender of a group
[MBS-8726] – Replicated updates don’t invalidate cache entries on slave servers
[MBS-8730] – Reordering of sub work parts causes unwanted reordering of main work parts
[MBS-8746] – JSON web service doesn’t distinguish between relationships not existing vs. not being loaded

Server update, 2016-01-11

Our first release of 2016 consists mainly of data-display fixes by Ulrich Klauer and a couple small improvements by Google Code-In students Caroline Gschwend and Ohm Patel. Notably, internationalized domain names are now displayed in decoded form: https://musicbrainz.org/url/2de1616a-7ca0-4688-92cc-0a8373190ede

Thanks once again to the above contributors. 🙂 The git tag for today’s release is v-2016-01-11 and the changelog is below.

Bug

[MBS-4575] – Old add release label edit does not display
[MBS-5205] – Text diff incorrectly highlights first word that didn’t change
[MBS-7844] – Name variation marker not used for artists in tracklists in “edit medium” edits
[MBS-8012] – Release dates/countries are displayed strangely in edit release label edits
[MBS-8161] – Medium titles have no diff highlighting when displaying edits
[MBS-8210] – Multiple “Remove ISRC/ISWC” edits on one page interfere
[MBS-8330] – Another name variation check after HTML entity conversion
[MBS-8413] – Removed URLs in edits are badly encoded
[MBS-8692] – Expired Catalyst sessions remain (partially) in Redis
[MBS-8698] – Content negotiation for JSON-LD representation does not work with multiple MIME types in Accept header

Improvement

[MBS-6407] – Add username to our verification mails
[MBS-8683] – Display internationalized domain names in decoded form
[MBS-8709] – Mark up removed entities as usual in add medium/edit medium edits
[MBS-8713] – Block SoundCloud search and tags URLs

Server update, 2015-12-28

A new feature in today’s release is a list of recent notes left on your edits (accessible from the menu in the upper-right corner of the page: “My Data” -> “Notes Left on My Edits”).

Users will be notified in a banner message whenever they receive a new edit note, and be linked to that page. Hopefully this will improve communication with people who aren’t seeing their emails.

We also have a number of bug fixes/improvements from Ulrich Klauer and several Google Code-In students: Caroline Gschwend, Ohm Patel, and Stanisław Szcześniak. Thanks for all your work!

The git tag is v-2015-12-28 and the changelog is below.

Bug

[MBS-7572] – Edit work alias is not showing the sort name loss
[MBS-7873] – Edit search for editor causes editor name to be listed twice in recent items
[MBS-7882] – Strange empty parens after alias name on edits
[MBS-7907] – Warning about pending edits on a relationship is missing
[MBS-8051] – Editor field in the edit search does not behave correctly
[MBS-8167] – Display error for instruments in member rels on edits
[MBS-8241] – Mediums with pending edits not highlighted in release display
[MBS-8381] – Some symbols are double-encoded in inline search
[MBS-8414] – Ended flag is not correctly handled in edits
[MBS-8635] – Untranslatable strings
[MBS-8690] – “Add artist” edit can’t be rejected if the artist has subscriptions
[MBS-8691] – “Edits for subscribed editors” page timing out
[MBS-8702] – Page title shows “"”
[MBS-8705] – HTML code shown in edit summary

Improvement

[MBS-4565] – Search for Edits by editor notes.
[MBS-7070] – Missing icon (small version) for area, place and work
[MBS-8482] – “Add Disc” button in editor should be renamed to “Add Medium” or “Add Tracklist”
[MBS-8504] – Edits mandated by editing interface should be auto-edits
[MBS-8565] – Update the Discogs logo used in the sidebar
[MBS-8658] – Include tag name on user/tag/tagname pages
[MBS-8663] – Link to user’s profile in report emails
[MBS-8665] – Automatically add a space after ; in join phrases

New Feature

[MBS-8676] – Add a page to see all notes left on your own edits

Task

[MBS-8574] – Update the Google+ logo used in the sidebar
[MBS-8657] – Update the flag of Libya
[MBS-8672] – Update the flag of Lesotho
[MBS-8673] – Update the flag of Myanmar