A wiki stores text with markup that defines some structure. A SQL database stores a number of rows with some non-recursive structure (columns). A noSQL database stores a number of documents with some structure (e.g. JSON)
Since quite a few wikis are used to store a lot of similar facts and objects, thus creating light-weight databases, it seems interesting to explore the possibility of extending this database ability of wikis.
Here is a list of features/topics that are relevant and could be considered:
- search in a wiki is similar to querying a database, although it ignores structure
- templates in a wiki are helpful to show the user what should be input and create similar pages easily.
- some plugins such as the task list plugin of the Confluence wiki offer a user interface for data input
- using some simple mapping rules, wiki text could be mapped to JSON structures and a couchDB backend would then be able to process the pages. If one writes the pages with some care, the JSON structures could be convenient to use in queries.
- A plugin in the wiki can display the result of a query (sort of a page include plugin on steroids)
Ideas of names for a Wiki/database hybrid:
- datki
- datiki
- dataki
- datuki
Integration With Ye Olde SQL RDBMS#
It is currently possible to embed SQL queries
against available (to the servlet container) databases in wiki pages. It is also possible (with this wiki) to embed forms for inserting into a database in wiki pages.
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This particular version was published on 14-Jul-2010 14:14 by scott.