Hapgood

Mike Caulfield's latest web incarnation. Networked Learning, Open Education, and Online Digital Literacy

The Simplest Federated Database That Could Possibly Work

The first wiki was described by Ward Cunningham as the “simplest database that could possibly work.” Over the next couple of years, many different functions were built on top of that simple database. Categories (and to some extent, the first web notions of tagging) were built using the “What links here?” functionality. The recent changes stream (again, a predecessor to the social streams you see every day now) was constructed off of file write dates. Profile signatures were page links, and were even used to construct a rudimentary messaging system.

In other words, it was a simple database that was able to build a rough fascimile of what would later become Web 2.0.

While we’ve talked about federated wiki as a browser, it can also be used as a backend database that natively inherits the flexibility of JSON instead of the rigidity of relational databases. Here we show how a few simple concepts — JSON templates, pages as data, and stable ids allow a designer to create a custom content application free of the mess of traditional databases that still preserves data as data. We do it in 45 minutes but we cut the video down to 12 minutes viewing time.

Best of all, anything you build on top of federated wiki inherits its page-internal journaling and federation capabilities. So you’re not only putting up a site in record time, you’re putting up a federated, forkable site as well.

The first wiki showed how far one could go with form elements, cgi, and links towards creating a robust community unlike those before it. It’s possible to see federated wiki as a similar toolkit to build new ways of working. I hope this video hints at how that might be done.

Note: I’ve also constructed this page using the above methods here. I think it looks pretty nice.

mikecaulfield's avatar

Posted by:

mikecaulfield

The infolit guy.

6 responses to “The Simplest Federated Database That Could Possibly Work”

  1. global.theknot.com Avatar
    global.theknot.com

    Useful info. Lucky me I discovered your website unintentionally, and I’m shocked why this coincidence did not happened earlier!
    I bookmarked it.

    Reply
  2. new york bestselling books Avatar
    new york bestselling books

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on consciousness spiritual.
    Regards

    Reply
  3. Forest Avatar
    Forest

    Best of all, anything you build on top of federated wiki inherits its page-internal journaling and federation capabilities. So you’re not only putting up a site in record time, you’re putting up a federated, forkable site as well.

    I was playing around with this tonight. Maybe, this speaks to my lack of understanding about how FedWiki works, but if you want to fork the page then you’d click on Edit and then the fork button, right? That will fork the backend of the site, the federated wiki as a database, but it won’t actually fork the traditional html front-end to the site, no? I guess what I’m asking is, there’s no way to set up a “fork” button on the webpage itself so that people could create a local fork of the webpage in all it’s html glory with one single click?

    Reply
    1. mikecaulfield Avatar
      mikecaulfield

      If you have a site with a federated wiki backend you can drag and drop it on your site’s backend and then it will show up on your site.

      The HTML is not forkable, because HTML is a display format and inherently not forkable (except maybe for the simplest HTML).

      Reply
  4. Design of a BAD approach to developing TPACK | The Weblog of (a) David Jones

    […] after starting on this post did I stumble across this post from @hapgood that explains and has a video demonstrating how to use SFW as a “database”. The video […]

    Reply
  5. sell my domain godaddy Avatar
    sell my domain godaddy

    Blow Your Competitors Out Of The Water With These
    Internet marketing Tricks

    A website you build might look really fancy
    and pack in a lot of features, however ask yourself a
    truthful concern here: What good are all those bells and whistles doing if
    no one’s even visiting your site? This is the issue
    you’re going to have unless you deal with the issue of SEO, so bone up on your skills.

    Increase your site traffic and the income from your website by guaranteeing it has no broken links or pages.
    Broken links avoid clients from navigating your site.
    Broken pages are worse, because then the material is simply missing out on.
    Busted material can’t be indexed by online search
    engine either, which is also bad marketing.

    Even conserved images and video files on your server can provide a chance to enhance in the rankings, so make sure that you’re constantly saving files with keywords.
    For instance: If you have an image on your website dealing with weight loss, like
    a before-and-after image, make certain you include an appropriate keyword in the title when you conserve the image.

    Prevent utilizing keywords that are of no relevance
    to your site or product. Web crawler bots might error your website as spam
    and blacklist your website from the search results when you do.

    On the other hand, be sure to include all pertinent keywords on your house page as this is the page you must desire your clients
    to see initially.

    Be certain about your phrases and keywords and keep it simple.
    You will certainly have spread yourself too thin if you attempt to capture
    every keyword in your specific niche. Target a select couple of and use
    them artistically and commonly while still maintaining a natural flow to your page.
    By doing this you can push to the top of the list a lot easier.

    Effective SEO methods will not require a high level of skill and
    even a lot of effort. Exactly what is necessary is that
    you take the right method. As you find out about SEO, you will find that a
    few small tweaks can correspond to huge outcomes.
    Get going on your optimization by utilizing exactly what you have actually found out here.

    For more reference: visit us at SEOBloggerninja

    Reply

Leave a comment