Work on the new equipment database and module, which is the highlight of 2021, is ongoing, and during October I worked very hard again on this, making giant leaps forward in terms of progress. I don't think I've ever written this much code in such a short period of time ever, and as I look at it, I'm also very happy about the quality!
The code has been finally integrated within the production deployment of AstroBin, which lifted a weight off my shoulders because there were lots of database schema migrations involved. However, it's the new sections on AstroBin are not open to the public yet.
I would like to thank some companies for their contribution: I have received product databases from πΊπΈ OPT and πΊπΈ High Point Scientific, and I will try to integrate them, again to alleviate the migration workload. π©πͺ Teleskop-Service has also offered to help and they are working on a data export. Please do show your appreciation for these companies: they don't just sell us stuff, but they actively care for the community.
The migration and explorer tool has been extended to support Telescopes too, and the next steps will involve including Mounts, Filters, Accessories, and Software.
Thanks to help by David Stevenson, it looks like the migration from the legacy database will be less manual work than initially forecast, so this is great news for everyone!
What's the expected timeline for all this?
In November, I hope to have performed preliminary item consolidations and migrations for the major camera brands.
In December, I hope to do the same for telescopes too.
In January, I hope that the image upload and edit forms have been ported to use equipment items from the new database, as well as the images' technical cards.
In February, I hope that I have completed work on the community pages for equipment items and the new search tools.