>>>>> " " == Frank Schönheit <- Sun Microsystems Germany
>>>>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> writes:
Hi Frank,
>> However as I understand mediawiki (the software behind
>> wikipedia) store complete documents in a database, which usually is a
>> mysql database.
>>
>> So my question is couldn't OO also store whole writer documents into
>> the (mysql) database?
> It could, but it wouldn't make much sense. A relational database
> has its strengths in other areas. I strongly suppose even
> mediawiki doesn't store plain articles in the database. Instead,
> they will pre-process them, extract various kind of information,
> and put those into different tables - for quicker searching, for
> keeping integrity, and the like.
As far as mediawiki is concerned your are right, I think. Searching is
an issue and version control as well. (Which brings me to a little off
topic: I find version control in say writer a little awkward it seems
that every no version is added to the original document increasing so
considerably the size of the document, also there seem no easy way to
restore and compare different version, as say RCS based version
control does, so may a version control using a database would be good
thing itself)?
> So "storing writer documents in a MySQL database" does not have
> value in itself. It would only make sense if you want to do
> additional processing on the documents, but then this sounds
> more like a task for a document management system, not an office
> suite.
Well one thing could be version control as a mentioned it above (the
wikipedia interface for different versions seems to be more advanced
and more intuitive to use that the one OO offers (but may be I don't
gasp all the details of OO version control system.).
The other issue would be a sort of document management system as you
mention. I sometimes 'abuse' the dba interface in order to import
scalc documents. Why? Well also I try to have a ordered file system, I
sometimes move files in the tree set links etc and then I cannot find
a particular document. If I could copy a writer document into the
database I would obtain 3 advantages
- Since the database has its own structure I cannot "move
documents" the way I move them in file systems.
- I can easier search the whole database for keywords in order to
find an article
- It might be possible to get a version control system similar to
the one wikipedia offers.
I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement, but I think it
would be a nifty feature (I am not sure whether MS Office has
something like this)....
Uwe
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
