Permaculture Database

[Richard Archer <pcdb@juggernaut.com.au>]

At 12:39 PM +0000 21/12/06, Rich Morris wrote:

>Users can edit the the wiki, by clicking on the edit tab at the top of
>the window. This will take you to a form like
>http://www.pfaf.org/wiki/index.php?title=Cichorium_intybus&action=edit

I must say, MediaWiki does have some interesting cross-linking
features. But still, I don't see how it could be postulated that
having users fill in a form with lots of boxes and with server-side
validation is any harder for them than creating the following,
freehand, without errors:

==Physical Characteristics==
{{height width pic|height=1.5|width=0.5|habit=Perennial}}
{{habit|Perennial}} growing to {{height|1.5}}m by {{width|0.5}}m. <br>
It is hardy to zone {{prop|Hardyness|3}} and is {{prop|Hardyness|not
frost tender}}. <br>

And I can see that the article is then stored in the database
as this massive chunk of text. If you wanted to perform an
analysis of the data you need to parse all the properties
out first. (e.g. {{prop|Hardyness|not frost tender}})

And Rich admits "the current website update cycle is a nightmare".
Well, that works in reverse, extracting the data from the Wiki and
restructuring it as a normalised database for deeper analysis
would probably be even harder.

I still maintain that the dataset should be stored directly into
an SQL database, and get there via custom forms with strict
validation.

The data-browsing side of the system could look just like the
Wiki, it would just take a little more work to get there.
And IMHO the admin side would be much cleaner and simpler by
using well-designed forms.

And you get a portable, structured dataset into the bargain.

 ...R.