Identity Management Mode

You may have noticed that on the model manager's front screen there are a pair of radio buttons right at the top - these are marked Model Update and Identity Management. Everything we've done so far has been in Model Update mode, so now we're going to look at Identity Management. As you have probably guessed from it's name, it focuses primarily on the issues of Identity Maps and their related download records.

Manually Adding An IDmap

The first example we're going to work through is simply to add a new IDmap to an existing model, in this case Sabrina and we're going to simply record that she is model no 1 on our demonstration site (called WACSD aka WACSdemo).

The first steps as shown above are simply to select the Identity Management radio button and type in the desired model number as before. All you then need to do is click on Find Model and you go straight to the IDmap page.

[Note]Note

For Identity Management mode the first three ways of finding the model work as you might expect from Model Update mode. The final one, uploading an XML file, doesn't do the same things at all and we'll cover that later in this chapter.

This is the list of existing IDmaps for Sabrina and as you can see she has quite a few! Of particular interest, and I know we've mentioned this before is that she has two on Sapphic Erotica (SE) and as you can see from the notes, the id changed after they did a site redesign. At the bottom of the screen, you see the web form we can use to add an additional entry. Something which we're now going to do:

This is simply a case of choosing the WACS Demo site from the pull-down menu and working out and adding in the model number or reference on that site as the key. If the site you want to add isn't in the list, it can be quickly and easily added using the Wacs Vendor Manager (described in the section called “Vendor Manager” in Chapter 11, Other Web Based Tools). Once entered, you just click on Add Idmap and you should see the following screen in confirmation:

We now have a new application for managing IDmaps and various links are provided in the Model Manager that link to it.

The WACS ID Manager

If you click on any one of the links to a given ID map in either the model manager or in the main full details modelpage, you can expect to arrive at the WACS ID Manager app wacsidmgr. This application allows you do manipulate the ID map - updating information on when it was last checked and changed, changing the key (if it has no associated download records) or marking it as obsolete (Gone) to permit the addition of a new current identity. As you will see in this example, it warns us when we are not allowed to modify certain aspects of the identity because of data integrity issues with download records that refer to it.

This application gives access to updating the changed and checked dates on a model's ID map for the first time. Previously only the automatic download chkmodel application could do this but as we've moved away from automatic downloading, this has become very necessary in maintaining reasonable data. You will notice it cautions against changing certain fields because of associated records. The normal proceedure is to mark a previous ID map as "Gone" and create a new ID for the same site but with the new details when a model has been renumbered by an upstream site.

Importing IDs From XML

We mentioned earlier that using an XML file in Identity Management mode was rather different from doing so in Model Update mode. For the purposes of this little demonstration, we've deleted all the download entries for Karup's PC (KPC) and the IDmap from Sabrina's records.

We're then going to proceed to import the supplied sample XML file (usually /usr/share/wacs/samples/models/Sabrina-18.xml) in Identity Management mode and you'll see what it does. The first step of course is to select Identity Management, browse for the XML file and click on Upload Model XML File.

As you can see, the model manager has found our record for Sabrina, and realised that we're missing the KPC identity and added it. Additionally it has discovered that the XML files has some extra download records it didn't have and has added those too.

[Note]Note

This trick only works correctly because Sabrina still has other uniquely identifiable (ie complete) IDmaps which can be used to associate her with the IDmaps from the XML file. That is we have some IDmaps that are common ground and indicate the link between our model Sabrina and the model detailed in the XML file.