As the author of this topic my interest in databases is specifically about leveraging the tiddler, it can act as a record in a database with the fields driving the additional columns but also comes with convenient default fields such as created and modified.
- A simple tag or field value can indicate to which table a record belongs, and smart design can have one record appear in more than one table.
- The advantage of such records in a database, is as written about by me in the past, tiddlywiki puts the primary key or title at eye level, so each row in a table can be considered an object within that table.
- Tools such as relink and other design methods can easily link records, tables to build sophisticated structures, basically by providing a title (for one to one relationships), or filter (for one to many relationships), relink specifically allows us to retain referential integrity.
- By focusing on the tiddler as a database record we automatically inherit all the features of a tiddler and can then make use of tiddlywikis UI in viewing, listing, modifying records. This includes but is not limited to plugins/shadow tiddlers as read-only tiddlers that can be edited is desired. Thus a plugin can be a repository of data tiddlers.
- Anyone with database and software design experience can see how a number of well establish features will be needed to back this up including field definitions, field type definitions, forms, edit modes, object and report templates.
The motivation of this topic is to open access and building of common everyday databases around the tiddler as a record, and to do this providing a small subset of tools to allow such databases to be bootstrapped with minimal complexity. Provide an infrastructure to move from a tiddler, considering it a real world object (contact, task etc…) and helping automaticaly deliver the necessary tools to build and use forms as a UI into the resulting database.
- One design effort can be generalised to help many future design efforts by capturing and publishing the core infrastructure layer to make better use of tiddlywiki as a database for everyday objects.
Futures;
Once we have a reliable and accessible way to build databases and manipulate the data therein it will become possible to build meta tools that a naive user can use to build their databases with design guidance, on how to do so effectively.