[IRCServices] XML Export Clarification

[Andrew Church]

>This is my first post on any mailing list... ever. So forgive me if I've
>missed some major ettiquette conventions, it's unintentional.

You're doing fine, don't worry. (:

>As I am currently testing on a "live" install, I don't want to repeat this,
>but the wording in the manual is somewhat ambiguous as to whether the
>command line -export=filename will cause the same behaviour, as it also
>mentions database information changing, and shutting the server down before
>exporting.
>
>Can I use the command line -export option to export the services database
>while ircservices is running and connected to a network?

Yes; you can run "ircservices -export" from the command line while an
active copy of Services is running, and doing so won't affect that running
copy.  However, keep in mind that the exported data will only be current
as of the last database file update, so it may be up to 5 minutes old (or
whatever period of time you specified in the UpdateTimeout directive in
ircservices.conf).

>Also, does anyone have any experience with modifying the database services
>uses in real time? Ideally I'd like external applications to have access to
>constantly up-to-date information from services.

Unfortunately, Services isn't designed to handle asynchronous updates to
its databases.  Providing read-only access to the data is feasible in
theory, but you'd need to write a custom module to handle it.

>Current Version Info:
>IRC Services 5.0.50 with Unreal3.2.4

Also let me point out that this version of Services is quite old, and has
known security flaws; I'd recommend that you upgrade to either the current
version (5.1.11) or, if you prefer to stay with the 5.0 series, the latest
release in that series (5.0.63).

  --Andrew Church
    achurch at achurch.org
    http://achurch.org/