Re: fs-independent quotas

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden%schemamania.org@localhost>]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 17:14:30 +0000
David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:

> I have been asked by Important People(TM) to resurrect this and
> not just let it all go. 

Chalk up one for the good guys!  

> - We still need suggstions for better terminology than "quota classes"
> and "quota types".

Our last words on that subject were on 20 October:

>  > Two pairs that strike me as more mnemonic:
>  > 
>  >    id, target
>  >    principal, securable
> 
> There's already an id column in the table. The "class" is the type of
> id, not the id itself. And similarly, the "type" is the type of
> target, not the target itself.
> 
> Maybe "idtype" and "targettype"?

If I understand the problem correctly, some of the naming difficulty
arises from a normalization error.  Thinking in relational terms, 
id_type is a property of id, and target_type a property of the target.
Those are both independent of the id-target pair, so you really have
three relations, not one, i.e.: 

        id, type
        target, type
        id, target

I don't know if it's feasible or desirable to separate them that way,
but it would make naming them easier.  

Restricting the discussion to the names in the existing structure, if
"idtype" classifies the existing id column, then that's a good name.
I'd use "id_type", sacrificing brevity for clarity, unless there are
other names with unseparated words.  

That's the easy one.  The other one means "kind of thing to which the
quota applies".  I can't think of an English word that means
"limited thing", but we really want such a word so that the name can be
"limited_thing_type".   

target_type is defensible; that gives us "type of thing thing the quota
is aimed at".  But it's still a bit generic, and it's hard to reason a
priori about the "target" of a quota: is a quota aimed at the account
or the storage?  

Unless someone suggests a good word for "limited thing", maybe the best
option is to invent a term of art and *define* it to mean what you
want, after the manner of Humpty Dumpty.  To that end I suggest
"quotar" or "quoton".   They're both short, easy to remember, and mean
nothing obvious.   The latter kinda sorta sounds like "quota on", which
might be helpful.  

HTH.  

--jkl