Re: [Digir-dev] Provider - setup.php - usability comment for resource configurati on (Third Step: Tables)

[Renato De G. <re...@cr...>]

Hi Meg,

See my comments below...

> When doing table mapping and defining joins across tables, you are giving
> two combo boxes.  You select from the first drop-down box a "table1.field"
> and then you create the join by selecting from the second drop-down box a
> "table2.field".  When the second drop-down box snaps closed, it fires off
> and event that automatically saves this join definition and allows the user
> to define addtional joins.  This can be frustrating, because of the time it
> takes from the time you snap the drop-down box selection and the time the
> php script reloads the page with the new information (this can take 5-7
> seconds).  There have been numerous occassions where I accidently make a
> selection and have to wait for it to save my incorrect info and then have to
> wait through the remove process (which takes equally as long).

I did that way because more than once, when configuring a new 
resource and after selecting the last join (correctly), I clicked on 
the "next step" button without remembering to add the join. But I 
think you are right, so the combo trigger was removed and I included 
another constraint just to be sure that distracted users aren't 
forgetting anything.

> Part of the problem is that our dBs have so many joins to define (we have
> 40+ tables and some 700 fields).  It's hard to scroll through all of the
> table.field options... and quite often, I accidently select the wrong one.
> This process is very cumbersome and I find myself getting very frustrated.  
> 
> Hopefully, we will really only have to define this once... we will need to
> perform the exact same mapping for some 100+ different databases.  I hope to
> find a way to feed this mapping definition in for all of our users ahead of
> time (I still haven't figured out how we will do this... sometime in the
> future, this could become a topic for a different thread).  Anyway, I
> mention this because I don't know how many other users could find this to be
> a problem.  Can you think of anyway to speed-up or simplify the process?

Yes, we could implement some sort of "mapping templates". Each 
template would be related to a conceptual schema and a particular 
system (or version of a system). By defining some criteria to detect 
the system, the configurator could offer the user an automatic 
mapping based on the template. What do you think? 
Is it easy to identify a Specify database from inside the 
configurator by knowing only table and field names? (or content of 
specific records)

Regards,
--
Renato