not handling non unique names well

[Teffania]

Currently two records exist:

3033 - Mielikko Karvulakki (no further details)
2733 - Mielikko Karvulakki - formerly or alternatively known as Finnr of St Kessog (more details)

Clearly they should be merged, and that will happen. But there is no mechanism for coping with this intermediate state.

Canonlore displays under the list of people whose names start with M only record 3033
searching brings up both records, and record 2733 can be found by looking for Finnr and following the redirect.

Seems to me there is a non valid assumption of name uniqueness here.

Either Gratian needs to have a test for primary name uniqueness, which prevents saving two identical primary sca names, or canonlore should display both records, listing the name Mielikko Karvulakki twice. Or possibly both.

[Teffania (teffania)]

Additional comments on name uniqueness:

Any 2 registered SCA names are unique. Registered names currently (and likely in future) represent only a tiny fraction of the names in the database - eg people who recieved an AOA then left the society.

Non registered sca names are not unique. They might be identical with other entries (eg single names entered or x of groupname), or might be identical with a registered name (eg Angus McDougal). No ammount of effort on Rocket's part will ensure 100% registration currently, and it certainly wont fix the legacy of years of unregistered names of people who no longer play.

Non-unique non-registered sca names will occur. Exact duplication will be rare. It might be possible to investigate every new instance of such and find an additional name element to create uniqueness, as long as there is some mechanism to tell the data entry person immediately this is needed. So long as this is rare, it's probably possible.

[Teffania (teffania)]

The above rants are about unique primary sca names. Alternate/former sca names are where I'm likely to enter the duplicated name into both holders of it. So the odds of nono-unique alternate/former names are higher, and I don't think i can promise to change those by creative renaming.

So how does canon lore handle a case where two people have the same alternate/former name?

[Paul Harrison (paul-francis-harrison)]

Names are uniquified by being stored in a map in canon.php:GetAZList then again in canon.php:GatherList. If a name occurs twice the first entry is overwritten by the next one. These functions are used in person and branch code.

Solution would be to create lists rather than maps in these functions. Need new function in common.php to sort a list by 'name'.

[Teffania (teffania)]

Still need something in gratian that tells the data entry person they've attempted to enter a known value though, don't we?