Re: [Phpwiki-talk] config in db

[Zot O'C. <zo...@wh...>]

On Mon, 2004-01-26 at 11:01, Steve Wainstead wrote:
> On Jan 26, 2004, at 3:05 AM, Oliver Betz wrote:
> 
> > Reini Urban wrote:
> >
> >> Why not storing the index.php configuration in the database, table
> >> config, editable only by the admin?
> >
> > because it would be less transparent.
> 
> I concur. Plain text has the main advantage that it is easily read, 
> edited, shared, and backed up.
> ~swain

Plain Text is also overwhelming as presented.  I like the idea of a
"config" file for everything not needed in index.php.

I see a "config" file  for every day things (where's the DB, what
sessions, server side tweaks), a config.once file for the initial boot
process, and things which you could change on the fly, in a DB
accessible via the web.

The last one is a tricky but important thing.

Think of the process for a newbie:

     1. You edit the minimal config file for things that need to be
        there (DB entries, timeouts, other things, wiki name and
        prefixes).  You probably do not need to edit config.once
        (config.init sounds better). 
     2. You run index.php.  It bitches about no DB loaded.  Perhaps it
        offers to load the config file for you (which means the wikidb
        user has table create access, a bad idea, but livable), or the
        user has to load the DB schema by hand (current).
     3. You get in, but things needs fixing, but *YOU GET IN*.  There is
        no "cannot see anything so I have to edit a text file" barrier.
     4. You tweak most things via a web interface (theme's, user names,
        admin passwords, etc).

The key difference of this approach over other approaches is
*intuitive.*  It is not intuitive to do 90% of the tasks, and get 0%
results.  This is the case of most programs.  Quicken was one of the
first packages that let you go forward with mistakes, and then see
results and then fix them.  This was much better than the standard "you
must have everything right before we show the results" approach to
software.

If you take a step back and think about, Ward's goal's for the wiki wiki
wiki web was to reduce barriers to increase communication.  Reducing the
steps to go live, and the possible pitfalls, and making tweaking easier
via the web, follows Ward's goals.

And I hope by now, some of you have realized that web based
configuration and flat file config are not incongruous.  The web
interface must be able to write to a file on that system, and it could
be a .ini-like file.  It could be a dbm file or sql call as well.



-- 
Zot O'Connor

http://www.ZotConsulting.com
http://www.WhiteKnightHackers.com