Before we continue to the actual steps you need to take, we need to cover one more aspect of the theory of sets in Wacs. There are occasions when you end up with more than one physical set of essentially the same thing - that is the same models, scenario and location. Sometimes this can come about for the collector by two different upstream sources supplying the same content. Sometimes you might have reason to offer two or more versions of the same movie, one for high-resolution computer screens, the other for SmartPhones. Whatever the reason, you can and do end up with multiple versions of the same thing and each of these takes the form of a set within the WACS database.
Of course you don't want to show these multiple versions multiple
times in new release, search results and model pages as it's confusing to
the user and looks pretty untidy.
In previous releases of Wacs (prior to Wacs 0.9.0), there was a type
of Duplicate which simply hid the duplicate set by means
of the preference exclusions mechanism within Wacs. This was far from
ideal and didn't provide much flexibility in making use of this set if you
wanted to. From Wacs 0.9.0 onwards this is handled far more gracefully.
There are a number of components to how the mechanism now works in
Wacs 0.9.x and we're going to describe how each of these are expected to
work. The first one we'll look at is known as rank and
relates to a database field called srank within the
sets database schema.
The concept of rank is that each and every set is now considered to fall into one of three categories (plus undetermined - ie not set yet). These are:
Table 4.2. Set Ranks
| Name | Char | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | P | A standard normal free standing set - image or video |
| Secondary | S | A duplicate version containing the same (or part of the same) content as another set |
| Continuation | C | A continuation of another set - a second or subsequent part of a movie sub-divided for easier download, etc |
![[Note]](images/note.png) | Note |
|---|---|
If a set has no value for srank it will be treated as if it were a Primary set. |
So as you can see from this it now becomes fairly simple to hide sets that aren't needed from searches and new release listings while their purpose for being there is reasonably clear. However to make this mechanism useful, there is a further feature that is needed - the ability to tell which set is related in this way.
With the Rank mechanism above describing each sets role within the larger picture, we need additional information in order to make the necessary connections between related sets. To allow this to happen a number of fields now exist within the database (used from Wacs 0.9.0 onwards) to explain exactly what those relationships are.
The first of these fields is called sduplicates and
it contains a set number allowing the set ranked as the primary to refer to
it's secondary. The secondary set typically refers back to the primary in
the same way, but can refer onwards to another alternative secondary set
before that refers back to the primary. A number of special calls are
available to Wacs Programmers making it easy to follow these links.
The next pair of fields are concerned with continuation sets. For these
records it is quite common to have as many as four or five shorter video
clips tied together and so we provide links to both the next set (field:
snext) and the previous set (field:
sprev).
The final connection mechanism is for alternative media - that is when
we have a photo set and a video clip both sharing common attributes. This is
probably the most common scenario of all in the adult industry. The field
for this is known as saltmedia. Normally these just link
between the photo set and the video clip with each linking to the other, but
you can make a chain if you wish to including details of a DVD release or
audio file as well.
| Note |
|---|---|
You won't need to worry about these database fields themselves other than to know they exist and why they're there as the collection maintenance tools all know about them in Wacs 0.9.0 and you will be prompted with a pull-down menu of suitable options when you select a Rank that needs them. |
The majority of Wacs applications are now aware of these fields and values and make use of them appropriately. No doubt we'll improve things over time but the basic building blocks are there and you can start using them.