Breaking the Order Key into 2 Entries

[marnues]

Hi

The order key has been bugging me for quite some time.
I'm not sure why this method was chosen, but I would like to request that the key be broken into 2 separate DB entries, one for the Parent' ID and the other for ordering under the parent's header.
Maybe there's some reason to have the order key that I'm not seeing, but it seems that splitting it is a much more logical and user-friendly method.

Quick background, I have a script that's suppose to be inserting a lot of devices into cacti.
I am doing most of the work through http so as not to mess with Cacti's internals, but attaching graphs to the tree has proven to be quite the bottleneck, so I've taken on interfacing directly with the DB on this one.
However, the order key is making things quite difficult for me as I have to organize every node below a parent, and not just its children.

So, this would be a huge time saver, and I think it would make your DB smaller and more organized.

[marnues]

Is this a touchy subject?
I'm seriously confused why the graph_tree_items table doesn't use pointers
it would save both you and me a lot of work

[TheWitness]

marnues,

Us, the people who "develop" Cacti, enherited some things and that was one of them. It's a PITA, and will remain that way for a while. We are looking at getting more developers online in the months to come. This, as many other things will be a topic of discussion.

Also, there are some very excellent automation tools that will be in the next point release of Cacti and are available for download today, just not officially supported. I have personall used them to install several hundred hosts and several thousand graphs in less than an hour already.

TheWitness

[marnues]

are they all plugins?
seems like we should probably get on the plugin bandwagon
it's a shame we're working with "production boxes" otherwise I'd work on that right now

also, I might be interested in contributing to Cacti
when I have some time I'll have to look into signing up

[TheWitness]

They are scripts that do not modify even a line of Cacti code. Search for them in the Add-On's section.

TheWitness