Hi!
I somewhat didn't jump here, as we simply don't use interwiki table on
WMF sites, so the topic was out of interest. :)
It seems to me that if we want to modify the core to
support interwiki
integration, there are any number of core tables that could benefit from DB
name fields.
I personally don't like the "interwiki integration", as pretty much
nearly everything has to go through one of these methods:
1. Pulling from all wikis
2. Pushing to all wikis
3. Having central backend
All these have their own nightmares, and separation was quite often
preventing us from madness. CentralAuth has added its own share of
inefficiencies that nobody has been working on yet. Having shared data
between multiple systems isn't the easiest problem usually, and it
needs more attention than a single-time feature deployment.
E.g., user_newtalk could have a DB name field, so that
users
could be informed which wiki(s) they have new messages on.
Nooooeeesss (you're suggesting 2 here... :)
in the harder cases it will make more sense to have
global tables, kinda
like what CentralAuth sets up, unless we want to do a major revamping of the
code.
I have no idea what major revamping you have in mind, when it comes to
data sharing.
Do note that we don't have any data consistency framework for
cross-database publishing, so you will always end up with
inconsistencies around, that are not guarded by transactions. For each
feature that means building a conflict/consistency management.. :)
Domas