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Database Schema

Helmut Kaufmann
Good evening,

Still trying to move all my Aperture images over to Capture One, I have written a little PHP program that checks if the files in a directory (hierarchy) have been imported into Capture One. Was/Is actually fun to do some programming again. I noticed that there are not that many tables in the SQLite database Capture One was using. Is there any documentation available on the schema? I would like to write some more code, possibly on simple duplicate detection - and not having to analyse the tables myself would help.

Thanks a lot,
Mercator
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Comments

14 comments

Date Votes
  • Helmut Kaufmann
    ... this does not seem to be a very "in topic". Does anyone at least know how to set a keyword on an image on the database (where the only thing I know is the filename of the image).

    Thanks for any help,
    Mercator
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  • SFA
    Probably best to direct this question to Phase in a support case.

    There is a Software Development Kit available I believe. Maybe that has the information you require.

    That said if I was Phase (or any other developer other than some sort of Open Source set up) that last think I would want to have to deal with is some sort of random and perhaps unannounced programs hacking around in a database and possibly throwing up unexplained and unexplainable random problems. So making the core development information available openly and to resource of unknown proficiency would not be at the top of my todo list.

    Just sayin', as they say.


    Grant
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  • Helmut Kaufmann
    Thanks for the reply and you might be right about the challenges that may arise. All I try to do is to get some of my problems solved (such as setting the capture data of .MOV files on the database - that one I think to have solved - and to tag an image with a keyword using a PHP or C program). The API is roughly 2000 Euros, which is a bit much for what I want.
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  • Neonsquare
    The normal way to do this for proprietary (not open source) software would be to create a support case to the vendor. E.g. a "reported bug" or a "feature request". No normal software vendor would allow users to hack the internals - this would be the horror in form of being liable for any damage that may result from that.
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  • Ulf Liljegren
    Hi

    Just give a little bit of information in this regard.

    In regards to SDK, there is a Phase One SDK which controls Capture Core and Image Core.
    (Controlling cameras and processing of Phase One files)
    There is no SDK for Capture One application as such except for Apple scripting.
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  • SFA
    Ulf wrote:
    Hi

    Just give a little bit of information in this regard.

    In regards to SDK, there is a Phase One SDK which controls Capture Core and Image Core.
    (Controlling cameras and processing of Phase One files)
    There is no SDK for Capture One application as such except for Apple scripting.


    Ah, thank you for that clarification Ulf.
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  • Helmut Kaufmann
    Ulf wrote:
    Hi

    Just give a little bit of information in this regard.

    In regards to SDK, there is a Phase One SDK which controls Capture Core and Image Core.
    (Controlling cameras and processing of Phase One files)
    There is no SDK for Capture One application as such except for Apple scripting.


    Hi Ulf,

    Thanks for your reply. What i would basically like to do is some simple manipulation of image base data, namely adding/removing/changing keywords, setting stars or the colour flags (plus manipulating the EXIF/IPTC data as I realised that some of the meta data did not get read by CO, such as the capture date of .mov files). If respective libraries were available for PHP/C/C++ that would actually be really great. I have managed to do some basic stuff on the SQLite database itself (such as correcting the image paths after an initial Aperture load) but it gets close to impossible to do more tricky things when you do not know about the unintended referential and other integrity constraints of a database...

    Enjoy the evening,
    Mercator
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  • RobiWan
    Hi Mercator,

    do you have asked support directly if its possible to become a small specification/description to the database?
    It is associated with very tedious and error to try it yourself to find out. Without manual intervention in the database many basics things are simply not possible.
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  • Helmut Kaufmann
    Yes, I have asked and was turned down ☹️ While this is a bit annoying, I can somehow understand it.
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  • RobiWan
    Thats bad. I'm still going to try to decrypt the database.
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  • Neonsquare
    @Robert
    Thats certainly a nice task - with possible helpful results. I'm in absolutely no further connection with Phaseone (besides of being a simple customer). But as a software developer I really can understand very well, that Phaseone denied it.

    The database model is internal. As soon as you publish details about it there will be an obligation to support that. It can hinder future changes out of reasons to stay "backward compatible" with published interfaces. Last not least it does cost a lot of money to document this for an arbitrary audience and holding that up to date. Would any of the interested people here throw a few thousand bucks on such information?
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  • SFA
    Neonsquare wrote:
    @Robert
    Thats certainly a nice task - with possible helpful results. I'm in absolutely no further connection with Phaseone (besides of being a simple customer). But as a software developer I really can understand very well, that Phaseone denied it.

    The database model is internal. As soon as you publish details about it there will be an obligation to support that. It can hinder future changes out of reasons to stay "backward compatible" with published interfaces. Last not least it does cost a lot of money to document this for an arbitrary audience and holding that up to date. Would any of the interested people here throw a few thousand bucks on such information?


    I totally agree with this.

    It also is very likely to result in all sorts of contentious discussions about support - especially free support.

    There is no reason to expect a commercial vendor to take an open source approach to its intellectual property.


    Grant
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  • Helmut Kaufmann
    Assuming Danish law is ile the rest of European law, there would be no problem at all to publish the design internals without support obligations...
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  • SFA
    mercator wrote:
    Assuming Danish law is ile the rest of European law, there would be no problem at all to publish the design internals without support obligations...


    Legally perhaps.

    How many frustrated users would care about legal obligations?


    Grant
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