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On 23 Sep 2008, at 16:21, Steve wrote: |
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> ... there are a number of 'key entities' - for example, Oil |
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> Companies; Oil Executives; Oil Fields; Oil Consultancies - etc. |
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> Hence, I know that I will be interested to develop a coherent |
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> profile of all the Oil Companies in a similar format. If I were to |
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> establish the market capitalisation for one oil company, I'd want to |
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> make it clear that this information is 'unknown' for other companies |
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> rather than simply not mention it. Similarly, for CEO; tax status - |
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> etc. When it comes to the directors, perhaps I want to establish |
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> "who's who" style information on them... where I'd collect their |
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> educational backgrounds; URLs for appearances in the press etc. |
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> ... |
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> Is there any existing software that does this sort of thing? A wiki |
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> goes part-way, but I'd want to be able to establish 'type' for |
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> pages... so that, for example, every record of a company has |
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> standard fields into which various statistics can be filled-in... |
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> and where URLs to external data is prompted... |
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To some extent a wiki can do a fair bit of what you ask. |
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On Wikipedia, for instance, books may use the "Book" Infobox construct |
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to state author, title, ISBN number, publisher & so on: |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Traveller%27s_Wife |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_Book |
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You can also categorise pages - someone simply added |
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"[[Category:Distributions]]" at the foot of http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FreeBSD |
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and now it appears on the http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category:Distributions |
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page. |
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The problem is that a wiki isn't a database, so I guess it depends how |
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flexible you want your data to be. I wouldn't be surprised if there |
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are database packages out there which allow you to store multiple |
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different types of information (company-type alongside CEO-type |
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alongside old-field-type), perhaps even link them and also add |
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flexible notes fields. I think I've read articles in the past about |
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such "flexible databases" - I think the author of Lotus Notes (or was |
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it 123?) has worked on one or proposed one or something. On the other |
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hand they may not handle versioning as well as a wiki, or have other |
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shortcomings. You may find that a wiki, alongside a good web-search |
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engine installed on the same server, does what you need. |
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Stroller. |
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