Requirements for archival type software
1. Data/Image/possibly video.... upload/search/retrevial/edit from web.
2. Easily implemented user defined Custom Fields
3. Easy backup.
4. Low cost ... either opensource or very low cost
I am a very novice programmer. My primary goal is to manage a collection and publish it to the web.
Options
A. Open source software such as collective access
Problems: Custom fields not supported. Continued support? Portablity of
database?
B. Use Microsoft Access and then use MVC or other development platforms to eventually
publish to the web.
Problems:Difficult to integrate to web?
C. Design my own MVC database application.
Problems:Difficult for novice programmer? Custom Fields and Upload of various data
formats difficult to implement?
Sounds like you are looking for a Digital Assets Management system. I found ResourceSpace (http://www.resourcespace.org/) and Razuna (http://www.razuna.org/) very useful for similar projects - both fall into your A category.
Requirements for archival type
software 1. Data/Image/possibly
video.... upload/search/retrevial/edit
from web. 2. Easily implemented user
defined Custom Fields 3. Easy backup.
4. Low cost ... either opensource or very low cost
Hi there,
As mentioned here before, but Razuna will satisfy your requirements quite well.
It can manage images, documents, videos and audios. It will share folderd and collections on the web with access permissions and will allow you to search among the different kind of assets as well.
Moreover, it can handle metadata of all this asset. It will not only read metadata, but also WRITE metadata, also. Furthermore, you can set the custom fields for each asset type and users will have a web interface to work with.
Razuna supports different databases (H2, MySQL, MS SQL and Oracle (soon DB2)) and let's you migrate from one db to another with ease (backup / restore option).
Best of it all: It is available under a open source license for you to deploy and enjoy today. You can get it at http://razuna.org.
Kind Regards,
Nitai
PS: I'm the main developer and founder of Razuna.
Related
firstly I apologise if this is a ridiculously simple question to answer but it has been bothering me for a while.
I am trying to understand what salesforce actually is, I mean in technical terms. I have read the websites documentation and the wikipedia page but I am trying to understand what's behind all this fluffy terminology.
My understanding is that salesforce is a cloud based database which stores a very high volume of information and all salesforce apps consists of scripts that query this database and model them in different ways depending on the intended application, is this correct?
Thanks !
Software as a Service (SaaS)
To get program you need to download it, install, configure and so on. If your system have a lot of users it's very hard to configure ans support single user installation.
Imagine that you improved application, new release for example. You need update every instance.
With SaaS model you have a shared web application, that do the same thing as old downloadable one. But it's much easier to support it, because ideally there is just one instance of it.
Salesforce is a company that provides its own system by SaaS model, but not only. It is also a platform for developing new applications.
I have a database that I need to distribute to users (it's a directory of contact details) probably on CDs.
Users have varying platforms (OS and device wise - I'm willing to target desktops hence CDs).
I was thinking of some kind of deployable webapp that would provide a nice interface and a sqlite database. Does some kind of db interface exist with a highly customisable ui? Or does someone have a better way of doing this?
How big is the database? One simplistic option would be to generate a "contacts" webpage and burn this to the CD. Users can then search this from their browser or perhaps you could do it for them using javascript.
If you really need a DB then you're looking at an embedded database of some sort, however, since you've suggested sqlite I suspect you know this already and are looking at user interface options.
You have not specified a technology, so I'll just list several frameworks designed to develop database backed webapps:
Grails (Groovy/Java)
Rails (Ruby)
Django (Python)
All the above operate in a development mode that uses an embedded database (H2 or Sqlite). Your only challenge will be to ensure their runtime environments are properly configured, or shipped on the CD as well.
In conclusion, I pretty certain this has been done before. Have you also considered just shipping an installer for your webapp, rather than worry about the complexities of getting something to run from CD? For example you might wish to support more than one platform: Linux, Windows, Mac, etc.
Update
Someone has thought of doing this:
http://www.benjysbrain.com/misc/cdsite/
I was actually reading up on CMS systems like Drupal, and noticed that they're similar to RDBMSes. I was wondering what the differences might be between them. When would we use an RDBMS and when would we use a CMS? Kinda confused and appreciate any input on this. Thanks!
You are asking what is the difference between a car and a Diesel engine.
CMS (Content management system) is a full-blown system allowing end-users to view and modify content (articles, media, etc.) in an easy way. See: List of content management systems.
RDBMS (Relational database management system) is a back-end software used to store low-level data. Typically CMSes use RDBMSes (like MySQL), but this is not a requirement. Nowadays end-users seldom use RDBMS directly.
After researching this topic (and being a Senior Oracle DBA and Java Developer) and reaching a good understanding of both, I can answer this.
Think of a CMS like Amazon, they host digital content such as books, movies and a myriad of other merchandise. Amazon has a fairly open ended query capability that helps you find products quickly and accurately (most times anyway!).
Now imagine this, Amazon goes in and organizes content a little different for logic/efficiency sakes, so what happens to the applications that use it...typically nothing!
You have to create a schema in an RDBMS and write code to interact with that schema. A CMS has facilities to store, organize and retrieve content (although some software would have to be developed that uses/interfaces with the "system"). Arguably, one could create database tables that have blob/clob types and make something CMS like.
One fine difference is that a CMS can support MIME types such as PDF and .DOCX files and understand how to search those for content as well (unlike a BLOB, it's just a BLOB right?).
I wouldn't limit a CMS as saying it is a "document repository" for web-based applications, because it is much more than that; a CMS can store structured, semi-structured and completely unstructured data (executables/.bin files/imagery...whatever!)
They're not similar at all. A CMS is a Content management System - it's used for maintaining content in a website. In a CMS you generally think of content as "pages" or "documents"
An RDBMS is a Relational Database Management System. An RDBMS manages data - in the form of text, numbers, etc, in a highly relational format. In an RDBMS, you think of data as "numeric values", strings of "text", "datetimes", or other primitive data formats.
Usually a CMS uses an RDBMS under the hood to store the data, which the CMS displays as page content.
They are really not the same:
RDBMS : Relational Database Management System - for handling data (SQL, MYSQL)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database_management_system
CMS: Content Management System - For working with web site content
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system
I think you are missing the point here...As far as i know a CMS uses an RDBMS to provided its data. As far as i know a CMS is just an abstraction layer built upon a database. It's much easier for a user to edit content by using the cms, then by directly editing data in a database table.
A CMS, strictly speaking, is a Content Management System, typically used for serving up web pages (SharePoint and other document repositories not withstanding). An RDBMS is a Relational Database Management System. CMSs usually reside within an RDBMS. RDBMSs are also typically used for much more intensive purposes than a CMS, for example, storing customer information or product data.
So one can integrate code e.g. java ... in a CMS to interact with a RDBMS e.g. MySql to endup with a CRUD (Create , Read, Update, Delete) web type application ?
The idea behind this, is to allow any user of the web site to update (specifically allowed) data stored in the RDBMS.
We seem to be getting close to an eCommerce website ...
CMS+RDBMS+code = eCommerce website
Not sure if that exists though ?
With the rising of non-sql database usage in high traffic website, I'm interested to use it for my project. Now I've heard several names like Voldermort, MongoDB and CouchDB. But which are among these NonSQL database that is production ready? I've seen the download pages and it seems that none of them is production ready because is not version 1.0 yet. Is there any other names other than these 3 that is recommendable to be used in production?
What do you mean by production ready? As far as I know, all of them are being used on live systems.
You should make your choice based on how the features they provide fit your needs.
You can also add Tokyo Cabinet to the list as well as the mnesia database provided by the Erlang VM.
I think you need to start out from your project requirements to see what kind of database you really need. There are many non-relational DBMS:s out there and they differ a lot in what kind of problems they are good at solving. I think the article Should you go Beyond Relational Databases? by Martin Kleppmann is a good starting point for finding out what you need. There's also a lot of stackoverflow threads on similar topics, these are my favorites:
The Next-gen Databases
Non-Relational Database Design
When shouldn’t you use a relational
database?
Good reasons NOT to use a relational
database?
When you have narrowed down what you actually need you can take a deeper look into the alternatives to see which DBMS are production ready for your use case. Production readiness isn't a yes/no thing: people may successfully deploy some solution that for example lacks in tool support - in another project this could be a no-go.
As for version numbers different projects have a different take on this, so you can't just compare the version numbers. I'm involved in the graph database project Neo4j and even if it has been in production use for 5+ years by now we still haven't released a version 1.0 final yet.
I'm tempted to answer "use SIRA_PRISE".
It's definitely non-SQL.
And its current version is 1.2, meaning that someone like you must definitely assume it's "production-ready".
But perhaps I shouldn't be answering at all.
Nice article comparing rdbms with 'next gen' and listing some providers:
Is the Relational Database Doomed?
http://readwrite.com/2009/02/12/is-the-relational-database-doomed
I will suggest you to use Arangodb.
ArangoDB is a multi-model mostly-memory database with a flexible data model for documents and graphs. It is designed as a “general purpose database”, offering all the features you typically need for modern web applications.
ArangoDB is supposed to grow with the application—the project may start as a simple single-server prototype, nothing you couldn’t do with a relational database equally well. After some time, some geo-location features are needed and a shopping cart requires transactions. ArangoDB’s graph data model is useful for the recommendation system. The smartphone app needs a lean API to the back-end—this is where Foxx, ArangoDB’s integrated Javascript application framework, comes into play.
Another unique feature is ArangoDB’s query language AQL — it makes querying powerful and convenient. AQL enables you to describe complex filter conditions and joins in a readable format, much in the same way as SQL.
You can model your data in several ways:
in key/value pairs
as collections of documents
as graphs with nodes, edges, and properties for both
You can access data in ArangoDB:
using the general HTTP REST API via curl/wget, or your browser
via the ArangoDB shell (“arangosh”)
using a programming language specific client library
Server requirements for ArangoDB:
ArangoDB runs on Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows.
It runs on 32bit and 64bit systems, though using a 32bit system will limit you to using only approximately 2 to 3 GB of data with ArangoDB.
I'm hoping you can help.
I'm looking for a zero config multi-user datbase that my winforms application can easily upload to a webserver folder (together with 1 or 2 classic asp pages) and am looking for some suggestions/recommendations.
The idea is that the database will be used to collect feedback entered by people filling in the asp pages. The pages will write to the database using javascript.
The database will subsequently be downloaded again for processing once the responses are in.
In Summary:
It will mostly run in MS Windows environments.
I have a modest budget for this and do not mind paying for such a database.
No runtime licensing costs.
Should be xcopy - Once uploaded to a website folder it should be operational.
It should not have a dotnet CLR dependency.
It should support a resonable level of concurrent access. Average respondent count would be around 20-30 but one never knows.
Should be a reasonable size so that uploads/downloads to and from the site will be reasonably fast.
Would appreciate your suggestions/comments
Many thanks
Abz
To clarify - this is a desktop commercial application for feedback management in a vertical market. It uses SQL Server as the backing store.
The application currently provides feedback management from email and paper feedback. I now want to add web feedback capability. Getting users to to make their SQL servers accessible to a website is not at option at this time as I am want to make getting up and running as painless as possible.
I intend to release a web based implementation of the software in the near future but for now am looking at the above as a pragmatic way to provide web based feedback collection.
SQLite comes to mind. It meets all of your stated requirements, is open source, and has a liberal license (public domain).
http://sqlite.org/
I would use 'normal' database (say MySql, Postgresql, Firebird, etc.) on server. Instead of copying files to server your winforms application would create custom tables (or even custom databases). After collecting data you could just get it back to your application using plain old SQL.
why reinvent the wheel ? If you want to collect feedback and stuffs from users of your app and if they are connected to internet, it might be a better idea - and in the long term cheaper - to use a service like wufoo. We recently switched from homegrown setup to wufoo and are very pleased. Check it out.
Otherwise you might want to take a look at sqlite orfirebird. Both of them are very robust, and have ADO.NET providers. Firebird scales from a single user to full blown client server system and has no .NET dependency.
If you really don't want a DB/SQL Solution, you could try simple text files and ftp/xcopy files down and parse them into the back-office server as needed. ASP/VBScript or ASP.NET can create the files to store the basic feedback comments. Need to consider security of course!