Rival Destiny Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 I was thinking about what is in store for me to make this change over to DD for my MP store. First I have to install a viewer that will accomodate the new DD system, then I have to follow the procedure to change over my magic boxes to folders in my inventory.Then I started to wonder about all the thousands and thousands of products on the MP and what kind of impact is this going to have on the inventory servers?Has LL poinied up & purchased new serviers to take up the slack here or am I not understanding how our inventory is stored.I'm concerned about not only inventory loading but also the present inventory tree that we now have. Is there any plans in place to improve upon the system as it is? And number of items we have in invetory which grows each day. Right now I store things in boxes, in world, alts etc. Am considering the impact on my own inventory and wonder what other's thoughts are in this regard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 >I'm thinking that this may be a train wreck in disguise. Disguise? WHAT disguise? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rival Destiny Posted March 31, 2012 Author Share Posted March 31, 2012 Let me reword that bit then... ........better? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Because of the way DD works, the load on the Inventory Servers is actually much lower to deliver an item via DD than to deliver it the "old fashioned" way via Magic Boxes. In the MB scenario, there is a final copy from the MB contents to the Recipient's Inventory. However along the way there are numerous scripts that must be executed in-world, numerous messages that must be communicated between tasks and servers, and all the overhead in both simulator usage and infrastructure server time and resources. With DD, the final copy is done between an internal (what I call the "Escrow Inventory") server to the Recipient's Inventory. However all that "shtuff" in the middle is gone. Because items uploaded for delivery via DD are stored on the MP's private Escrow Inventory server, they have no impact on the Merchant's inventory count. After uploading a folder to MP, you can safely box it up and archive it and only pull it out should you need to update the MP deliverables at some later date. These are some of the reasons I believe in the DD model .. and desperately want it to work properly. The attendant load it puts on the Inventory Servers and all the infrastructure servers is much lower and will have a long-term benefit that, while not massive, is very definitely noticeable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Maybe. I didn't mean to criticize YOU, actually. I just meant that suggesting there's anything unambiguous about the train wreck is giving LL too much credit. Especially since, other than being only slightly worse, it's essentially what I have been telling everyone to expect all along. For me, it's been like watching a train wreck that takes 8 months, and about which no one does anything, preferring to tell me "that's just how trains work." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rival Destiny Posted March 31, 2012 Author Share Posted March 31, 2012 thanks for that info...much appreciated. I can understand now how that is a benefit. I think it's quite possible that my not understanding how this process is going to work has left me thinking that it may just make things more cumbersome. I am still waiting to make the changeover though but as I gather more information, I'm hoping I'll be expecting a more positive outcome. Right now, I'm very sceptical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rival Destiny Posted March 31, 2012 Author Share Posted March 31, 2012 ...ah I see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 > the load on the Inventory Servers is actually much lower to deliver an item via DD I get that. But I have doubts about how much the lower load matters if the item doesn't deliver. DD should work better. I think everyone knows that. But as long as a working version of DD doesn't exist, no comparison of some imaginary version of DD to a real version of MB that, if not phukked-with, actually works OK, hardly seems fair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Josh Susanto wrote: > the load on the Inventory Servers is actually much lower to deliver an item via DD I get that. But I have doubts about how much the lower load matters if the item doesn't deliver. DD should work better. I think everyone knows that. But as long as a working version of DD doesn't exist, no comparison of some imaginary version of DD to a real version of MB that, if not phukked-with, actually works OK, hardly seems fair. You're not quite correct in your base observation Josh; DD is working now. I am delivering products daily from my store via DD. When asked to perform, DD is performing properly. However all the side issues that have diluted customer trust in the Marketplace are preventing folks from noticing that. There are some hitches in specific situations, the most prevalent is the periodic hangup of transactions that occurs just before payment is sent to the Merchant. (Which I can understand strengthens your theory about Malefactor Linden.) But one of the causes of that error has been identified (Unicode in the Product Listing Title) and I'm pretty sure the other causes will be found fairly soon. But when it comes to the basic mechanism that is the hallmark of DD ... it's working just fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 OK, then. I expect you're right about this. But is there any compelling reason for me to want to migrate before absolutely necessary? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Josh Susanto wrote: OK, then. I expect you're right about this. But is there any compelling reason for me to want to migrate before absolutely necessary? Nope. In fact, there are probably advantages in your case for waiting. Considering how many items you will need to migrate though, you'd be best to leave yourself 3-5 days .. in other words start migrating 3-5 days before the deadline cutoff date. By then they should have enough of the bugs worked out, and enough others will already be done with their migration that you should have excellent speed and excellent results. Do you think you'll leave things boxed or will you expand them out into folders? If boxed then you can get by with 2-3 days .. tops. If expanded, your most time consuming task will be in creating those folders in preparation for the upload. But that's also something that you can do at leisure any time prior that you wish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 My current plan is to wait for them to extend the deadline and then wait some more for them to tell people to re-migrate. But I do intent to continue observing the process in case the "fixes" don't also blow up after a while. Either way, the bigger question is whether I should even dare to introduce any new products, as this also means taking certain risks with the SLM. My listing are all stll unborked, so changing any variable I haven't already changed since the deployment seems a little on the dicey side. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rival Destiny Posted March 31, 2012 Author Share Posted March 31, 2012 I've most definitely been considering the same thing...that LL will extend the deadline. Been my experience in most things that they do, they extend the deadline or otherwise it just stays in limbo. This is a big job for me and I'm just a very small store, so I can't imagine what it must be like for those with thousands of items on the MP. I'll wait with Josh and the rest to see what happens & most likely will migrate at the last possible minute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Since the initial deployment of DD, I've released three "new" products. (Actually one truly new one and put two more on the site that I was previously selling only in-world.) I tend to do all my work at the wee stupid hours of the morning when system load is lowest, and so far (crossing fingers) I'm also "clean" of extreme borkiness. Yet another reason I believe the errors we're seeing with cross-linked listings is related to them being converted during peak times. Over the past day or two, I've also noticed a considerable speed increase in the site, but I'm not sure if that's only a result of their optimizations or if it's also due to the drastic roll-off of traffic because people are "once burned, 337 times shy" with the site. And that feeds directly into my advice to wait until the last minute. Listing Upload Traffic is bound to be way down by then, and should be pretty much equivalent to the daily load in normal operation. The one caveat to keep in mind though Josh ... the last day or two will be jammed with folks that also have waited for the last minute. (Sort of like the long lines at the DMV on the last two days of the month before various licenses and other gubment documents need to be renewed.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 In the spirit of not repeating past mistaked, though, maybe we should expect LL not to delay the box cutoff date, but to bump it up earlier and give us like 12 hours notice or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rival Destiny Posted March 31, 2012 Author Share Posted March 31, 2012 Yes I've most definitely noticed the site loading much faster and my purchases/sales seem to be almost back to normal, traffic wise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rival Destiny Posted March 31, 2012 Author Share Posted March 31, 2012 omg they wouldn't !!! would they????? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 Today they did announce they will be extending the deadlines. To wit: "Also know that we will be extending migration dates. Please stay tuned for more details." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted March 31, 2012 Share Posted March 31, 2012 >The one caveat to keep in mind though Josh ... the last day or two will be jammed with folks that also have waited for the last minute. That's not necessarily a problem in my case. Since my operation costs approach zero, it might even make more sense to just shut my store down for a window of 24 hours on either side of the cutoff, and start clean once the smoke has cleared... if it clears. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rival Destiny Posted March 31, 2012 Author Share Posted March 31, 2012 Wonderful thanks! You know I try my best to keep up with the issues but I'm not in sl 24/7. More like 2-4/7. LL has grid stats page etc. But would if not behoove them to have one place to post ALL notices? Or again am I missing that page??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted April 1, 2012 Share Posted April 1, 2012 Rival Destiny wrote: (..snip..) LL has grid stats page etc. But would if not behoove them to have one place to post ALL notices? Or again am I missing that page??? The Merchant Home Page has that Pink Box that they use to post important current info, but it's static text; it doesn't scroll or keep history like the Grid Status site does. It would be nice if they could use the same mechanism that is in place on the Forums, something like a Locked Thread, and then display that in the Pink Box. Then they could post updates to it ... the updated entry going on top and everything else srolling down. The Pink Box could keep the last 3-5 entries, and Merchants could click to open it and see more history if desired. They also need the same thing for customers. From the Marketplace Home Page, there needs to be a Public Pink Box that behaves the same way. Good thinking Rival. Now .. go make a JIRA Feature Request for it and we'll all sign it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anaiya Arnold Posted April 1, 2012 Share Posted April 1, 2012 It's not just an ocassional glitch. Items that have no-copy perms for the seller cannot even be sold using DD, with magic boxes they could. Magic box delivered one of each no-copy item sold, but DD delivers however many it delivers. Hanging transactions are an additional problem. There is no ANS with DD and many merchants rely on ANS. There's the uni-code issue which we did not have with magic boxes. There is also the issue that for many people it really does not work and they literally cannot upload items to sell using the merchant outbox thingie. You can suggest that because the engine starts, a car works, but if it has no steering wheel, no tires, and the brakes do not function, others may deem your defination of "works" as being far from meaningful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anaiya Arnold Posted April 1, 2012 Share Posted April 1, 2012 Darrius Gothly wrote: Today they did announce they will be extending the deadlines. To wit: "Also know that we will be extending migration dates. Please stay tuned for more details." Yes, that's the best news since this whole DD thing was deployed, even if delivered in odd language. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted April 1, 2012 Share Posted April 1, 2012 Anaiya Arnold wrote: It's not just an ocassional glitch. Items that have no-copy perms for the seller cannot even be sold using DD, with magic boxes they could. Magic box delivered one of each no-copy item sold, but DD delivers however many it delivers. Hanging transactions are an additional problem. There is no ANS with DD and many merchants rely on ANS. There's the uni-code issue which we did not have with magic boxes. There is also the issue that for many people it really does not work and they literally cannot upload items to sell using the merchant outbox thingie. You can suggest that because the engine starts, a car works, but if it has no steering wheel, no tires, and the brakes do not function, others may deem your defination of "works" as being far from meaningful. We obviously look at things from different perspectives. Having been in a software development role for most of my professional career, and contrasting that experience with how LL traditionally does their software releases, the state of DD today is much better than folks give it credit. For a majority of Merchants, DD is fully functional today. There are outliers, no argument there. I'm one of them due to my dependence on ANS. But your characterization of a car with "no steering wheel, no tires and the brakes do not work" is a bit of an over-amplification. I would more consider it something to the effect of "No air conditioning, no cruise control and no 10-disc CD changer". For most people the "car" does all it needs to do today. But those of us that depend on the luxury items such as A/C, cruise control and music are pretty much stuck. However ... the cross-linked listings issue? OWWWWCHHH!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rival Destiny Posted April 1, 2012 Author Share Posted April 1, 2012 From what I know, a CD changer or air conditoning are not required to get from point A to point B. So I have to say that if some merchants cannot sell product still, then I think Analya's analogy trumps yours. I'm not in software development but I am in a proffesional field that uses certain types of software. In my profession, we would be in a lot of trouble if we used ANY software that didn't work properly. Having it work partially would be totally unacceptable and any of our software providers, would never present it to us until it was 100% workable. I suppose it all depends on what the software is used for and the expectations of the users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Flickr
Recommended Posts
Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now