Grouper Developers Forum

[Chris Hyzer <>]

> The new "flattened memberships" table concerns me for a couple
> of reasons.  First, it requires the change log be enabled, which we
> don't do.  Second, it appears to contain a record for each effective
> member of each group.  Correct me if I'm wrong there.

Well, it is the flattened view.  So if you are a direct member of a group, 
and an indirect member by 10 paths, then you will only have one record in the 
flattened table for that group.

> So my question is: What is the consequence of running without the
> change log, ignoring the flattened memberships table altogether?
> Are there any core functions of grouper that are going to depend
> on this table?

As Tom mentioned, the notifications are more efficient when the external 
system doesn't care about why someone is a member, just that they are a 
member.  Also, that table is more efficient to query.  For instance, if 
someone is an admin of many groups, and that person goes to the UI to in 
"Manage groups" mode, then Grouper needs to calculate which groups the person 
can admin.  From the normal registry this has been reported too slow, but I 
believe the flattened table can do it quickly (we still need to work this 
part out).

https://bugs.internet2.edu/jira/browse/GRP-458

Another case if you have a lot of web service hits and the data doesn't need 
to be up to date (flattened should be a few minutes behind), then we will put 
a mode in where the request can go against the flattened tables, and this 
will help the DB load.

Anyways, bottom line is, sorry this means you need more storage space in the 
DB, but it would be nice to assume that people use this feature.  If you 
strongly disagree (and perhaps either way) maybe we can discuss at a dev call 
some time.

Thanks!
Chris