Everyone has their own way of doing things, but starting out with the base of what the designers intended is always a good practice. Any work (or modifications to existing work) that I do will follow this basic format:
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/sho...12&postcount=7
The only problem I really have with this is the merge confusion - which is not a problem to the PEQ folks, since that is not their focus - it's our, individual desire to have more content immediately that is driving this effort again. If you use REPLACE INTO, you run the risk of blowing up LOTS of PEQ data. If you use INSERT INTO, you'll bump into existing (unique) records and lose Cavedude's data. I see some tables with auto increment values, and others where there are none. The confusion for me lies in, say, Zone ID 202 having npc ID 202000, in spawn group <autoinc, so it could be anything> using loot table <auto, anything> with loot drops <auto, anything> etc... see where I'm going? Sure it cuts down redundancy to NOT tie npc loot, faction, or spawn id's to zone id's (* 1000) but at the same time, it becomes hell to manage.
As a learning exercise, this is where I am focusing my attention right now... learning the intertwinings of the database and seeing if I can make things make more sense
to me. I doubt my effort will become an acepted norm, but at least I will understand what's going on when I am through.