Canonical names chosen by the site: Dell Inc., HP, Zebra. The rule is the same
in each case - keep the spelling that holds the entries - it just lands on a
different form per company. Dell Inc. carries 310 references and 33 models
against 1 apiece for Dell and DellInc.; HP carries 51 and 24 while HP Inc. has
none; Zebra carries 7 and 2 while Zebra Technologies has none.
So HP Inc. and Zebra Technologies are gone from the shipped catalog. Both were
empty rows that only ever offered a second way to spell a vendor already
present, and neither exists in this site's database at all - they would have
arrived as duplicates at a NEW site and nowhere else.
Also removed UnscopedLiveVendor, which is a test artifact. It reached the
catalog because export_catalog.py reads the live development database, so a row
left behind by a lab run was published as reference data and has shipped to
every site seeded since.
Vendors 51 to 48. Verified nothing referenced any of the three before removing
them, and the catalog still has no duplicates by any spelling.
The seed catalog is what a new site inherits, so its duplicates propagate.
Removed the four space-stripped twins it carried: vendor 'DellInc.', model
'OptiPlex7080', and operating systems 'MicrosoftWindows10Enterprise' and
'Windows10', each of which had a correctly spaced original already present.
'OptiPlex5000' was NOT a duplicate - no spaced twin existed - so it was
renamed to 'OptiPlex 5000' rather than dropped, matching every sibling in the
list. Its vendor moved to 'Dell Inc.', which this site treats as the one
canonical Dell.
Vendors 53 to 51, models 128 to 127, operating systems 14 to 12. Verified
afterwards: no exact duplicate rows, no near-duplicates, no orphaned
model-to-vendor or supply-to-model reference.
`flask seed reference-data` wrote a dozen generic model types and no vendors or
models at all, so adopting this platform began by retyping a catalog another
site had already spent a year building. That is the largest single obstacle to
standing a new facility up.
scripts/export_catalog.py dumps the catalog from a live instance to
shopdb/data/catalog.json, and `flask seed catalog` loads it. What travels:
vendors 53, models 128, modelsupplies 146, modeltypes 35, machinetypes 21,
computertypes 10, printertypes 9, networkdevicetypes 5, locationtypes 11,
operatingsystems 14, measuringtooltypes 8, notificationtypes 3,
accessprotocols 3
The 146 printer supplies are the most useful part after the models themselves:
every toner, drum and maintenance kit with its part number, colour, capacity
tier and page yield, already matched to the right model, instead of somebody
reading them off spent cartridges.
IDEMPOTENT and ADDITIVE. Records match on a natural key - a vendor by name, a
model by vendor plus model number, a supply by model plus part number - so a
second run adds nothing, and it never updates or deletes: a site that corrected
a description or pointed a model at its own photo keeps its version.
Catalog only. No assets, locations, employees, business units or anything with a
serial number: nobody wants one plant's machines appearing at another. Vendor
contact details are excluded too, since a rep's name and number belong to
whoever holds that relationship. supportteams, printerdrivers and customfields
are site-specific and deliberately absent.
Models and supplies reference their vendor by NAME rather than id, because ids
differ between databases and an id-keyed catalog would silently attach part
numbers to the wrong printer.
The installer offers it as a tick-box on a new "Starter data" page, defaulting
to on, passing -SeedCatalog to stage 3. Offered rather than assumed: a site that
machines nothing does not want 21 machine types cluttering its dropdowns.
Verified by loading into an empty database and running twice: every group
populated on the first pass, "Catalog already present, nothing to add" on the
second.
