[IRCServices] using a different database for user auth?

[Andrew Church]

     In the future, Services will (hopefully) support other methods of data
storage, but something as unusual as you suggest would likely still need a
custom module to be written.  As far as the current version of Services
goes, yes, you can use XML to update the databases, but be aware that
Services is not currently capable of importing XML data while running;
since it would not be advisable to allow anyone to restart Services by
creating a new account (think "while true ; do wget ... ; done"), you could
set up a cron job to terminate Services, import any new/changed data, and
restart Services periodically, say in the early morning.  (If you do this,
make sure you use "kill" or "kill -TERM" to terminate Services--if you use
"kill -INT" or other signals, Services will not save the databases on exit.)

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

>Hi,
>
>I have an interesting problem. I maintain the server for a large site with a forum and fancy java chat system, currently the logins for the java chat system are linked to the user accounts on the forum, which is vBulletin. I wrot the login stuff myself in
> PHP.
>
>We'd like to do away with the java chat system for various reasons, and possibly like to replace it with an IRC server. One of the main concerns here is controllung use of nicknames. 
>
>Unfortunately, asking users to create two accounts (one on the forum, one on the IRC server/services) isn't really an option. I must keep the IRC services accounts in sync with the forum ones. 
>
>I have noticed that there is an inport function for the accounts used by Services - I can easily create the XML file from the vBulletin account data for Services to import, however, how should I keep this updated? Should I simply have Services import the 
>current account data every hour or so? 
>
>There are approximately 8,000 accounts on the forum, but I don't expect that more than 500 or so would create an IRC account.
>
>What is the best way to approach this? While I am more than willing to code support for something like this myself, I'm afraid my C/C++ skills are not up to the task at the moment.
>
>Does anyone have any other ideas about how to accomplish this? 
>
>Many thanks,
>
>Charlie
>
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