Category: NGS

MusicBrainz Next Generation Schema (or simply NGS) refers to the updated database schema released on 18 May 2011.

NGS bug fixes, 2011-07-05

The wheels of change are slowly starting back up again, now that we have all our employees back 🙂 Here’s what we’ve got done since the last release:

Bug

  • [MBS-1849] – Alias locales not included in the XML
  • [MBS-2223] – Length not shown in edit when adding a standalone recording
  • [MBS-2586] – Search results do not show standalone recordings
  • [MBS-2807] – Stack trace requesting /ws/2/collection when user has no collections
  • [MBS-2846] – Internal Server Error on lot of editing histories
  • [MBS-2880] – Error viewing release group/URL
  • [MBS-2882] – Merge recording edit display incorrectly once applied
  • [MBS-2898] – Search indices aren’t updating, haven’t updated in over 20 hours

Improvement

  • [MBS-777] – Make cancelling take effect sooner
  • [MBS-1508] – Should release browse request allow inc=recordings
  • [MBS-2767] – Release-group XML result should include first release date

Beta release of libmusicbrainz4 with NGS support

Andy Hawkins and Lukáš Lalinský have been doing some work on libmusicbrainz, and a beta release of version 4 is now available. Here’s what Andy has to say:

Hi all,

In conjunction with Lukas I’ve been working on a complete rewrite of libmusicbrainz to support the new Web Service v2 released alongside NGS. I’m happy to announce the first Beta release of this new library (libmusicbrainz4).

The library is written as a relatively simple parser for the results from the Web Service, with as little logic as possible. This should mean it is easy to maintain to keep in step with any changes in the schema for the XML Web Service.

The main interface is a C++ class ‘CQuery’, that returns a Metadata object containing a parsed version of the response. There is also a C interface that loosely wraps the C++ classes.

Using the library requires a good understanding of the queries and responses to and from the Web Service.

The library is available to download here:

ftp://ftp.musicbrainz.org/pub/musicbrainz/libmusicbrainz-4.0.0beta1.tar.gz

Documentation is generated from the source (make docs), an online copy is available here:

http://users.musicbrainz.org/~luks/docs/libmusicbrainz4/

If you find any issues, please report them using JIRA (under the project ‘libmusicbrainz’) here:

http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/

I will attempt to be available via this mailing list and the #musicbrainz-devel IRC channel on freenode in order to answer questions if at all possible.

NGS bug fixes for 2011-06-20

We ended up delaying this release by a day to make sure we could cram lots of work in before Oliver goes on holiday, so we’ve got quite a lot of things fixed last week!

Bugs

  • [MBS-1463] – Show artist(s) on doing recording-recording edits
  • [MBS-1507] – Search redirects to entity on partial matches
  • [MBS-1637] – When looking up existing tracklist, use current release name/artist
  • [MBS-2009] – Ticking the Vote box of the first edit causes "Vote on all edits" to match
  • [MBS-2010] – Release editor: Add existing tracklist to release search shows duplicates
  • [MBS-2028] – Entities highlighted with no open edits
  • [MBS-2041] – Change track artists still not working as expected
  • [MBS-2111] – Recording not found in add release "Recordings" phase
  • [MBS-2143] – Adding disc by searching for existing tracklist fails to find some tracklists
  • [MBS-2168] – Summary: (no changelog) when adding Catalog #
  • [MBS-2265] – In VA releases, once the auto-track duration is triggered, unchecking ‘detect track durations’ doesn’t work.
  • [MBS-2313] – Unnecessary edit annotation edit in the release editor
  • [MBS-2360] – Release editor: found recordings list doesn’t close
  • [MBS-2424] – Dropdown Box not updating Artist Name & Depressing Enter submits request
  • [MBS-2511] – Release edit interprets numbers in track titles as times
  • [MBS-2515] – Web service doesn’t return track artist credits in release query
  • [MBS-2574] – No radio buttons for attaching CD TOC
  • [MBS-2575] – Basic editor requires a space after track numbers
  • [MBS-2576] – Some edits have links on Deleted Artist
  • [MBS-2579] – Web service doesn’t return track lengths
  • [MBS-2580] – Web service returns <length/> for recordings with no duration
  • [MBS-2628] – "guess case" works incorrectly with work titles
  • [MBS-2630] – XML web service v1 reports duplicate ISRC and PUID
  • [MBS-2649] – Not receiving subscriptions emails
  • [MBS-2728] – CDlookup proposes and allows you to attach a DiscID to a Vinyl
  • [MBS-2738] – Internal Server Error trying to view release group editing history
  • [MBS-2753] – Annotation causing an internal server error in the search results
  • [MBS-2761] – Inline search always return artist results whatever type you chose
  • [MBS-2763] – Cannot accept edit relationship edits if an end point no longer exists
  • [MBS-2771] – Crash when relating recordings where relationships already exist
  • [MBS-2784] – Fuzzy CD lookup doesn’t work
  • [MBS-2804] – "Add release label" edit not showing again
  • [MBS-2818] – No tracklist editor textbox displayed on test.musicbrainz.org

Improvement

  • [MBS-390] – Edit search is incomplete
  • [MBS-777] – Make cancelling take effect sooner
  • [MBS-1717] – Allow selecting the release group of a release in the release editor
  • [MBS-2137] – Make subscriptions emails ignore your own edits
  • [MBS-2293] – Edit display improvement: Display ISRCs and lengths on recordings merge edits
  • [MBS-2378] – Changing artists in the release editor (release and track) doesn’t _appear_ to do what users expect
  • [MBS-2460] – Timeline graph should include MusicBrainz events
  • [MBS-2621] – Guess case editor doesn’t remember options
  • [MBS-2625] – Display "Artist in MusicBrainz" as well as the artist credit in edits
  • [MBS-2643] – Merge legend and checkbox-selector in timeline graph
  • [MBS-2752] – Copyable URLs for timeline graph need to account for geometry (i.e. zoom)
  • [MBS-2757] – Fix Artist gender statistics
  • [MBS-2769] – Release Country Statistics
  • [MBS-2822] – ‘Add disc ID’ doesn’t link to CDTOC

Task

  • [MBS-951] – MusicBrainz::Server::Data::Search::external_search is taking $c. It shouldn’t.
  • [MBS-2762] – Clear artist credits from memcached

Sub-task

  • [MBS-2451] – Display artist in release group search
  • [MBS-2665] – Edits with at least one No vote
  • [MBS-2671] – Filter by edit ID / time range
  • [MBS-2675] – Filter by label

This version has a new parameter in DBDefs, so you will need to make sure your lib/DBDefs.pm has all the options in lib/DBDefs.pm.default. There are also 2 more dependencies – DateTime::Format::Natural and Data::Dumper::Concise. The tag for this release is currently v-2011-06-20-ngs-bug-fixes

NGS bug fixes for 2011-06-14

Another week, another set of bug fixes! Here’s what we’ve addressed since the last release:

Bug

  • [MBS-1231] – Age information for a person looks weird
  • [MBS-1924] – Allowed merge direction for "Merge mediums and recordings" strategy seems non-intuitive
  • [MBS-1995] – Time from TOC is calculated incorrectly
  • [MBS-2000] – CC URL relationship does not allow selection of license
  • [MBS-2049] – Docs not in the transclusion table seem to be perma-cached
  • [MBS-2062] – Menu link ‘About->Auto-editor elections’ is invalid.
  • [MBS-2169] – Label entered regardless of clearing text
  • [MBS-2261] – Release group is listed twice on an artist page
  • [MBS-2347] – Seed particular release after clicking on the recording tabs it comes back with Frequent 502 Bad Gateway
  • [MBS-2376] – Inline search results disappear when clicking on the little arrows two times
  • [MBS-2391] – You should not be able to add the same CDTOC multiple times on the same medium
  • [MBS-2399] – Problems with mediums having duplicate CD TOCs
  • [MBS-2408] – Guess Case deletes volume and part numbers
  • [MBS-2447] – "Charter Member" thing no longer shown
  • [MBS-2483] – Edit URL edit for a removed URL displays wrong
  • [MBS-2485] – no way to merge a various artist clone into the default "Various Artists" artist
  • [MBS-2529] – Orphaned release group and recordings after rejecting or cancelling a release/medium
  • [MBS-2550] – Re-add the "Subscribe to artists I add" option
  • [MBS-2552] – Allow removing a RG that has relationships
  • [MBS-2560] – Internal Server Error when removing medium from a release
  • [MBS-2644] – Internal server error while trying to add a disc ID
  • [MBS-2645] – Error in the message when trying to relate works to recordings
  • [MBS-2651] – Edit shows up in unrelated artists’ edit history
  • [MBS-2658] – Edit URL edits cannot close if the URL being edited has since been merged
  • [MBS-2659] – Edit relationship fails if the relationship has since been edited into the same relationship
  • [MBS-2705] – Adding a note to an edit which has an existing note w/o timestamp gets presented out of order
  • [MBS-2724] – IPIs don’t appear when added in Add artist edits
  • [MBS-2744] – Track removals not shown in tracklist diff

Improvement

  • [MBS-1395] – Put relationship attributes descriptions inside of an HTML "label" tag
  • [MBS-1449] – Inline Search: relate to recordings and/or works on releases
  • [MBS-1982] – Add twitter link to home page
  • [MBS-2007] – Lack of spacing between the top nav search and the dropdown to accompany it
  • [MBS-2269] – Release editor > When new disc is added, check if the last disc is empty and replace it
  • [MBS-2299] – Display one-line TOC on discId page
  • [MBS-2430] – Tagger button for standalone recordings
  • [MBS-2459] – Timeline graph needs copyable URLs
  • [MBS-2697] – Could use a link to add a VA release group
  • [MBS-2721] – Sort recordings by comment

New Feature

  • [MBS-2567] – Statistics about artist countries

Sub-task

  • [MBS-1916] – Edit release label edit doesn’t display properly

NGS bug fixes for 2011-06-08

We’ve just updated the servers with the latest round of bug fixes. After two years of no updates, its feels good to get them so often, doesn’t it? The next release is scheduled for June 13th. The bugs fixed in this release:

Bug

  • [MBS-1851] – Can’t view "Edit artist" or "Edit label" edits: "An error occured while loading this edit"
  • [MBS-1908] – Releases not being sorted by name
  • [MBS-1919] – Guess case is missing for release titles.
  • [MBS-1937] – Subscriptions email is not sorted
  • [MBS-1994] – All tracks of candidate mediums are displayed twice while attaching a CDTOC
  • [MBS-2055] – Add release/add disc: cannot add tracks or edit track lengths; leaving the tracklist tab loses tracklists; other problems
  • [MBS-2067] – CDStub not displayed in the "Matching CDs" section on CDTOC lookup page
  • [MBS-2114] – Recording appears twice in Recordings list
  • [MBS-2122] – In artist credits "dialog" in advanced tracklist editor, the link beside "Preview" to artists is often incorrect
  • [MBS-2123] – In "artist credits" dialog, if you manually click the magnifying glass for the search, impossible to close search dialog
  • [MBS-2181] – Internal Server Error when submitting edit to remove and add disc
  • [MBS-2205] – "Keep me logged in" does not keep me logged in
  • [MBS-2261] – Release group is listed twice on an artist page
  • [MBS-2356] – &quot; code in tracklists
  • [MBS-2384] – Please restore migration scripts in admin/sql/updates
  • [MBS-2398] – Internal server error when trying to load the editing history of a release group
  • [MBS-2400] – ModBot deletes newly created artists that should appear in new artist credits once pending edits are applied
  • [MBS-2402] – Fix FTP link in INSTALL
  • [MBS-2470] – Can’t search for annotations with Unicode symbols in
  • [MBS-2482] – External links and last updated overlap
  • [MBS-2488] – Double escaping of & (&amp;) in tracklist
  • [MBS-2490] – Internal server error when trying to change recordings on multiple discs
  • [MBS-2516] – Changing existing IPI code/gender/country shouldn’t be an autoedit
  • [MBS-2526] – Edit Label: Changing an IPI code is an autoedit and the code is not shown in the edit history
  • [MBS-2563] – Internal Server Error on "relate to recordings" if you don’t select any recordings
  • [MBS-2566] – Relating artist to recordings leads to an internal server error
  • [MBS-2581] – "Rename artist credits" does not appear to be working when merging artists
  • [MBS-2613] – Can’t edit (random "Internal Server Error")
  • [MBS-2616] – Move disc ID edits fail if the target medium no longer exists
  • [MBS-2619] – Change release group edits fail if the target release group no longer exists
  • [MBS-2622] – Modbot doesn’t remove (all?) orphaned artists
  • [MBS-2627] – Subscription mail hasn’t been sent for two days in a row

Improvement

  • [MBS-1767] – "Edit medium" edit type doesn’t highlight what has changed between old and new values
  • [MBS-1944] – URL page should display relationships
  • [MBS-1970] – Set medium titles when merging releases
  • [MBS-2117] – "Relate to…" should end up back at the original entity, not at the entity related to
  • [MBS-2287] – Relationships type editing URLs should use GID rather than internal id, and GID should be displayed on AR tree
  • [MBS-2443] – Timeline graph should show exact values on hover.
  • [MBS-2444] – Data::Statistics needs a mapping of names (as in database) to labels to use for the timeline graph
  • [MBS-2445] – Timeline graph needs better tick placement so data can be skimmed more effectively
  • [MBS-2446] – Timeline graph needs better controls
  • [MBS-2448] – Timeline graph should allow adding/removing lines
  • [MBS-2472] – Fix display for two labels, one cat#
  • [MBS-2508] – Add CD-R to the formats list
  • [MBS-2512] – Add ISWCs to the basic metadata statistics
  • [MBS-2554] – Remove the quotes around work / recording names
  • [MBS-2568] – Statistics for artist type
  • [MBS-2569] – Statistics for artist gender
  • [MBS-2635] – Edit medium should show differences highlighted

Addressing user interface issues in NGS

Now that we’re slowly emerging from the critical bug fix phase in NGS, its time to make a plan of attack for how to address the most pressing issues that we need to clean up. The NGS user interface clearly requires a lot of work still; no one will argue that. The user interface was the hardest part about NGS — when we first started we had no idea how to make these things work. But, we got them to work and the team deserves a round of applause for that!

Now it time to get organized for future releases and we could use a bit of your help here. We’ve been doing daily hot fix releases and are now doing weekly releases. Once we’re done fixing critical issues we’re going to slow the schedule down to roughly monthly releases. In the future our releases will be a mix of bug fixes, UI improvements and new features. Nothing in NGS is in a state where “we have to live with it for a long time”.

If you don’t like some aspects of the NGS user interface, please head over to this UI ticket report in our bug tracker and see if we’ve already have a ticket for your pet issue. If we do have a ticket for your favorite issue, please vote on it to express your interest in having this ticket fixed.

We’re going to start working on the tickets that receive the most number of votes and work our way down. We’re going to engage our UX designer for more help to clean up the NGS user interface and to address all of these pesky problems that are plaguing our users.

But, please cut our developers some slack. If you don’t have anything constructive to say, vote on the tickets and sit tight. We know there are lots of issues and we’ve already fixed a pile of them, but we’re not going to forget about the other issues. Just please give us constructive feedback and some time.

Thanks!

NGS bug fixes for 2011-06-01

We’ve now slowed down a bit from the hot fixes and are starting to roll out weekly releases. To kick things off, here’s what we’ve just pushed out to the main servers:

Bug

  • [MBS-1071] – Relationships with pending edits should be highlighted
  • [MBS-1937] – Subscriptions email is not sorted
  • [MBS-1960] – Historic add release group edits have an invalid data section for artist credits
  • [MBS-2046] – Global ratelimits are not applied
  • [MBS-2055] – Add release/add disc: cannot add tracks or edit track lengths; leaving the tracklist tab loses tracklists; other problems
  • [MBS-2080] – Tracks times not being shown in release editor when DiscID is present
  • [MBS-2187] – IPIs from ASCAP not accepted
  • [MBS-2239] – Newly created work does not appear on the author’s list of works
  • [MBS-2247] – ModBot shouldn’t remove artists which were recently added
  • [MBS-2305] – Release groups shown twice on tag overview page for tag with releases and release groups.
  • [MBS-2316] – Broken link in "edits for your subscription" email
  • [MBS-2339] – Editing tracklist -> error
  • [MBS-2340] – Release tags do not show up in user’s created tags
  • [MBS-2375] – Label codes on label pages don’t have leading zeros anymore
  • [MBS-2380] – file error – work/relate.tt: not found
  • [MBS-2393] – Error when searching works for certain strings.
  • [MBS-2395] – Use the link type name in /ws/2/ XML
  • [MBS-2397] – can’t watch an artist
  • [MBS-2457] – Multiple Entries of the Same DiscID, not editable
  • [MBS-2464] – "Remove recording" edit is not displaying recording

Improvement

  • [MBS-1966] – Open edits list now backwards, showing newest edits first
  • [MBS-2074] – Change the label of the button at the bottom of the page from "Vote on All Edits" to "Save Changes"
  • [MBS-2290] – Replace letter x with multiplication sign.
  • [MBS-2379] – Wording in subscriptions email is inaccurate
  • [MBS-2396] – Make it possible to return recording and work level ARs from /ws/2/release

Task

  • [MBS-2063] – Detail ws/2 ISRC submission process

Ian McEwan, one of this years Google Summer of Code students, now has his first bit of work in MusicBrainz as well:

I have created a basic graph with a subset of the core entities and some limited interactivity.

This is essentially a stripped down version of the old MusicBrainz timeline. Lots more interesting features to come with this project, and it’s showing great potential!

The Git tag for this release is v-2011-06-01-ngs-bugfixes.

NGS hotfixes for 2011-05-27

A small set of fixes to finish the week. The next release after this is currently scheduled for Wednesday. Thanks for sticking with us through the NGS launch week! Please keep the bug reports coming in, no matter how insignificant you think the issue may be, your reporting has been tremendously helpful. The Git tag for this version is ocharles/v-2011-05-27-ngs-hotfixes – the official tag will be out late Monday (I don’t have a key to sign the tag with).

One note about the Sound Juicer/RhythmBox issues – this is actually a problem with programs being compiled against libmusicbrainz2, instead of libmusicbrainz3 and there’s nothing we can do about these problems. If you are experiencing problems we recommend you compile from source, or wait/pester your distribution to update their packages.

Bug

  • [MBS-2249] – Sound Juicer no longer works with NGS
  • [MBS-2274] – Sort names being returned incorrectly for multiple artist credits on /ws/1
  • [MBS-2295] – UX: Add Missing Entities loses your selections for artists if you forget to select (or add new artist sort-name for) one of them
  • [MBS-2296] – FixTrackLength script (aka modbot automatically setting track lengths) checks are wrong
  • [MBS-2328] – When seed release editor with recording ids for tracks the Release Editor associates them with the wrong tracks unless recording ids have been allocated for every track
  • [MBS-2332] – Error trying to edit tracklist of a release to remove excesive quoting
  • [MBS-2350] – Subscribe link doesn’t work (missing id)

Improvement

  • [MBS-2353] – Update javascript code for relationships so Wikipedia URL are recognized automatically for works