[bksvol-discuss] Re: admin queue redux
- From: "Jake Brownell" <jabrown@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 10:56:08 -0500
Hi Elizabeth,
All right, here's some ideas from a more technical standpoint, but one that
I hope is followable if you don't have a background in programming.
Websites like BookShare, are generally run with a back end database. Data
from that database is incorperated into web pages for presentation to web
users. To do this, the pages as stored on the BookShare server contain code
directives that the webserver processes before it sends you the page. When
you get the page all the server commands have been processed and all you get
is just a straight web page.
There are generally two technologies used during the pages transformation
from server to user.
The first is a database query, generally handled by SQL, pronounced sequel.
This query looks up information in the database and returns data sets to the
page that asked for the information.
Second is the code inside the page that the server is responsible for
processing. It requests data from the database using SQL and then takes the
dataset and determines how, when, and where to display it.
With pages like the administrative pools and the Step 1 page, there is an
SQL command that says, give me all the books that meet this criteria. And
then the page code generates output, like the table on Step 1.
To change the order of display should not require a code change, instead
adjusting the SQL statement to return a better dataset should be all that is
needed.
For instance, say that all the books are stored in one table. You will have
things like status, id number, title, author, etc. Then say there is a table
that contains the comment history, which holds stuff like status/date/user.
From what little I know about relational databases, this is probably a good
guess as to how it is set up.
The existing SQL statement could be modified to use what's called a JOIN
command which basically allows you to analyze data from both tables as if
they were one.
Then, adding an ORDER BY statement to the SQL command to reflect the
appropriate field to sort on should resort the data before the page code
even sees it. (the appropriate data field would probably be the last date in
the comment history).
So, what exactly are we talking about when we change the order of books
displaying on these pages?
We're talking about someone who has a decent/modest background in using SQL.
And, we're probably, I do want to emphasis probably/most likely, talking
about changing just one line in the page, the SQL statement.
Keep in mind that this does rely on the fact that the database is setup in a
standard way. From what I've seen the site capable of doing, it should be
setup just fine for our purposes.
Also, if the database is setup in a nonstandard way, there are other easy
ways of reordering the data such that better results will be given, just not
perfect first in first out. For instance, I know that the list could be
ordered based on submission dates rather than whatever convoluted way it's
setup now.
Good job if you made it this far in the message, grin. I hope it's been
informative and not overly technical.
Jake
----- Original Message -----
From: "E." <thoth93@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 5:32 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: admin queue redux
Jake can you comment from a technical standpoint on the reasons for
keeping the queue in its present order? Is this order difficult to change
from a programming standpoint? Do you know of a benefit of keeping it
this way. Seems so many disadvantages to this state of affairs have been
voiced so long.
Thanks for input.
E.
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