Dabble DB gets JSON
Saturday, April 22nd 2006 | Ismael Ghalimi
A couple of weeks ago, I indicated that Office 2.0 databases lacked the ability to syndicate complete records in a fully structured manner. Since then, Andrew and Avi at Smallthought Systems (the company developing Dabble DB) have worked on the issue and fixed the entry I made into the Office 2.0 bug tracker by adding a JSON feed to their already comprehensive list of data export formats (CSV, HTML, OPML, PDF, RSS, Text).
If you get a kick out of writing PHP code and SQL statements, this new feature will seem pretty useless to you. But if you’re anything like me and you prefer adding little snipets of JavaScript code to HTML pages you developed with a WYSIWYG editor or a blogging tool such as TypePad or WordPress, you will soon realize that this one feature might represent one of the most important developments for Office 2.0. Here is why: using Dabble DB, you are now capable of creating pretty sophisticated relational databases faster than with any other tool I could think of. You can then design custom views for your data in a couple of mouse clicks, and publish them onto the web in just one. Finally, the JSON export lets you display this data any way you want, by writing fairly simple JavaScript code. Granted, using wizards such as the ones offered by FeedDigest would make it even easier, but they do not work for arbitrary data schemas. Quite frankly, I have been waiting for such a thing since I first used a web browser, sometime back in 1994.
As a proof of concept, I created a very simple table storing the list of contributors to the Office 2.0 Database. I then enabled a JSON export, and wrote 11 lines of JavaScript code, 5 of which used for sorting the list of contributors by last name (note to Dabble DB: the JSON export should reflect the view’s sorting), and added the code to this post, leading to the following result:
Armed with this new tool, I am now able to complete the port of the intalio.com website to WordPress and will make some improvements to the Office 2.0 Database. Many thanks to Andrew and Avi for their great work.
Author’s note: Jeremy Zawodny has a great article on the DGata API.
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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I don’t have your technical smarts, but isn’t the point of Dabble DB that you use tags rather than develop hierarchies? Doesn’t tagging give users a more intuitive way of accessing the information they really need? Having said that, I can see a case for tag systems that reflect hierarchies but which serve as signposts for the information in which users are interested.
Dennis,
I agree with you, tags are usually more user-intuitive than hierarchies. That being said, end-users have developed a fair level of comfort with hierarchical folders, and having to give them away is not always easy, as was experienced by some Gmail early adopters. I tend to believe that both will be needed, at least during some transition period.
[…] Along with the private databases we expected, it’s also interesting to see some public uses emerging. Ismael Ghalimi’s Office 2.0 Database is an exported view of a Dabble application that lists and categorizes web-based productivity tools. He’s also integrated data feeds from Dabble deep into his IT|Redux blog, seamlessly populating the Office 2.0 Setup sidebar and the list of contributors to the database. He describes this a little further here and here. […]
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