First Office 2.0 Challenge
Thursday, August 17th 2006 | Ismael Ghalimi
Traditional office productivity suites get a major upgrade every three to four years. In contrast, Office 2.0 productivity suites such as Zoho see major improvements every two weeks. This is one of the reasons why I like Office 2.0 so much more. Another reasons — as indicated by Craig Cmehil — is the reactivity of Office 2.0 vendors compared to their 1.0 counterparts: ask a feature on your blog, and if you’re lucky, you might get it in the next bi-monthly release. I have been tracking such feature requests, but today, I want more, and there is nothing like than some healthy competition for getting it.
The idea is pretty simple: currently, the Office 2.0 Database shows 239 applications organized in 46 categories. That’s an average of more than 5 applications per category. Out of these, I would say that more than half are “serious” applications, developed by vendors that are likely to be around next year. So let’s say that each major category shows at least three legitimate contenders. How about challenging them to develop features that are needed? That’s pretty much the idea for the Office 2.0 Challenge.
For the first issue of the challenge, I have decided to focus on online databases, for which seven options are available: Caspio Bridge, Dabble DB, eUnifyDB, Lazybase, MyOwnDB, QuickBase, and Zoho Creator. The object of the challenge is pretty simple: develop the first Wikibase.
My definition of a “Wikibase” is the following: a Wikibase is to a database tool what a Wiki is to a document editor. In a Wiki, multiple people collaborate on the development of a document, moderators can approve or reject modifications to the document, and all modifications are captured through some versioning mechanism. The idea for a Wikibase is very similar: the Wikibase’s owner defines a database schema, contributors are free to create and modify records in the database, and the owner can approve or reject them. Of course, more complex workflows and meta-data management rules could be devised, but let’s keep it simple for the time being.
I first felt the need for something like a Wikibase when I tried to use Dabble DB and Zoho Creator to build a version of the Office 2.0 Database where contributors could directly update records. After a couple of attempts, I had to drop the ball, and started development with more traditional tools that require me to write custom code. I have been working on it on and off for a couple of months now, and the end is nowhere in sight.
Another instance occurred when I started developing the list of speakers for the Office 2.0 Conference. There, I wanted speakers to be able to edit part of their profiles themselves, such as the URL for their blogs, or their personal biographies. This example helped me refine my requirements, realizing that some fields on the database should be editable by contributors, while others should be locked and could only be changed by the Wikibase’s owner.
So here is the challenge: the first Office 2.0 database vendor to implement basic support for Wikibases wins. Basic support is defined as follows: fields (columns) in a database schema are either locked or unlocked. Contributors can only modify the values of unlocked fields. Database entries are either open or closed, in the sense that contributors can add new entries (rows) into the database, or not. Changes are tracked through linear versioning, on a row-by-row and colum-by-column basis. Finally, changes can either be moderated or not. Changes applied to a moderated database appear on the database’s public view only when they have been approved by the owner, while changes applied to a database that is not moderated appear immediately.
This is a ad-free blog, so all the winner gets is ego-boosting praise.
A vos marques, prêt, partez !
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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Wikibase is a nice idea, but there’s also a need for public data manipulation tools. Use Wikibase as an RDF resource.
Enrico,
What do you mean by “RDF resource”?
Ismael,
Peter Yim just sent this message out to the Ontology Community of Practice. RDF has come up in recent threads on the listserv so you may find this article to be of interest.
Ismael,
I tried attempting this for fun using Zoho Creator, and ended up with this first application. It has a Speakers Registration Form similar to what you have here. When a prospective speaker submits an entry, it falls into a “Yet to Approve” tab. There is another tab called “Approved Speakers” in which all the approved speakers are listed.
Only the owner of the application has the permission to approve a speaker or not. Others can only view “Approved Speakers” and “Yet to Approve” entries. When the owner signs in, he will have to just edit each of the “Yet to Approve” entries and select the “Approve” field and update it. This “Approve” field is hidden to everyone else.
Thus moderation for adding an entry is achieved. What needs to be done is to have moderation for updating and deleting the entries as well. For this, we have to integrate a database versioning system, which we have already developed in-house. Once it is integrated, that should also be possible. User name and password for the owner of this application is owner and owner. You can try it out to see how it works.
-Charles
Ed,
Thanks for the tip. Much appreciated!
Charles,
You guys are amazing! You got half of the requirements nailed. I cannot wait to see the other half. Also, I should have added another requirement: no custom code to be developed, only configuration of the tool. Do you think you can make it work that way?
Ismael,
As Charles mentioned, we are planning to integrate versioning and audit to the Zoho Creator database. Would that meet the Wikibase requirements?
-Sridhar
Sridhar,
I think it would. I’m really curious now…
It is interesting that someone brought up RDF and Ontology. These are way beyond the rudimentary requirements of a simple “one table” database that stores and shares information between the table owner and other approved contributors based on the permissions granted by the owner on domain (column), tuple (row), or both to approved contributors.
If my understanding is correct, Ismael is not looking for something to build Ontologies or Knowlege Bases, but only simple relational-like tables. I also doubt that Ismael is looking for a versatile database utility that can also structure databases into hierachical or network form!
Francis,
You’re right, I’m looking for something simple, which RDF is not. Don’t get me wrong, I love the power of RDF or DAML, but this is definitely at the other end of the spectrum. This first Office 2.0 Challenge targets something one or two orders of magnitude simpler, and the folks at Zoho are on a good way to nail it. I hope the other online databases will give it a shot though, for they might come up with innovative user interfaces for what I have in mind.
Ismael,
For this application, no custom code was written. Everything was done using the GUI configuration only. And the other half will also be available using GUI configuration only.
Charles,
Well, that’s even more impressive than I originally thought.
Office 2.0 get’s a challenge!
Ismael just threw out a challenge to all the Office 2.0 companies…
“It is interesting that someone brought up RDF and Ontology…” — interesting? A monkey writing SQL is interesting.
Enrico,
I’m not sure I understand your statement.
Simply put — Wikibase as an RDF Resources builder/descriptor, is much more than interesting.
Enrico,
Got it, thanks!
[…] Another interesting post here by Ismael Ghalimi. […]
[…] What’s Missing Online databases are really starting to match the capabilities offered by their offline counterparts, but some more work remains to be done in order to support the development of full-fledged applications. For most of the applications we reviewed, better support for the publishing of data entry forms, the WYSIWYG creation of reporting forms, and the ability to support more sophisticated user workflows would be welcome. Also, simple ways of granting access at the record level would make it a lot easier to create a broad range of applications, as described in this earlier article. […]
[…] Smartsheet looks really smart Smartsheet.com is a workflow-infused database dressed as an online spreadsheet and marketed as a project management application. A little bit like Coghead meeting Dabble DB, with a very sexy user interface. The feature that really grabbed my attention was the ability to define user permissions at the row level. This is something I could use for the Office 2.0 Database in order to let vendors edit their own records, along the lines of the idea for a Wikibase that was suggested in this past article. As of today, Smartsheet.com does not support JSON feeds (to be available in Q2), therefore I cannot use it for this purpose just quite yet, and the good folks at Dabble DB promised me that they will work on something that should address my needs. Therefore, I will stick to Dabble DB for the Office 2.0 Database, but might very well use Smartsheet.com for managing the speakers and sponsors for the upcoming Office 2.0 Conference. […]
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