[mb-devel] WebService usage

[Vidar Wahlberg]

Hi there, I got some questions regarding the WebService as I'm getting a
bit unexpected results.

Okay, so I got an ogg with lots of metadata, but I'm missing musicbrainz
id's and other handy metadata so I try to look it up using WebService.
For simplicity, let's say I got this metadata:
Artist : Europe
Release: 1982-1992
Track  : Seven Doors Hotel

Now first I look up the artist running this query:
http://musicbrainz.org/ws/1/artist/?type=xml&limit=5&name=Europe
The result is exactly what I want it to be in a handy format, no
problems here.

Further I wish to lookup the release:
http://musicbrainz.org/ws/1/release/?type=xml&limit=5&title=1982-1992&artistid=ccfe7a3c-1a45-4984-a8d0-644549cefe61
Here's where the unexpected values show. I've submitted the id of the
artist and the title of the release, but yet I get results from other
artists (with a different artist id) who've released something with a
similar title.
Why is this?
Shouldn't the artist id I submit cause the result I get to only contain
releases from the given artist?

And then at last I want to look up the track:
http://musicbrainz.org/ws/1/track/?type=xml&limit=5&title=Seven%20Doors%20Hotel&artistid=ccfe7a3c-1a45-4984-a8d0-644549cefe61&releaseid=ea6be413-fbd7-49f2-8546-e162d481e857
Again a bit unexpected values. Even though I've submitted both artist id
and release id, I get results from completly different artists and
releases.

Now someone might ask, "Why can't you just look the track directly up?"
Well, the query would be something like this:
http://musicbrainz.org/ws/1/track/?type=xml&limit=5&title=Seven%20Doors%20Hotel&artist=Europe&release=1982-1992
Yes, that would give me a result with only 1 query, but then I won't get
metadata such as release type, asin, release date or artist sortname.
That's metadata I can't go without (especially not the sortname, I sort
my archive on that).

The documentation of the WebService is somewhat short, and doing 3
queries to look up 1 track doesn't seem right. Maybe there's a more sane
way to look up a track with WebService?

Also, why is it so that you need to log in to do a track query while
it's not required to log in to do an artist or a release query?


-- 
Regards,
Vidar Wahlberg