Wikcess/flex-data

About

This is an experimental concept which I am developing out of an intuitive sense of the needs of several different projects, including FinanceFerret and TextFerret.

The primary differences between this and a standard relational database are:

• record-definitions are not fixed
• records can have a hierarchical relationship with each other

The code will be designed to use a standard relational database (MySQL) as a back-end, but it may be that this concept is ultimately more compatible with other types of databases (e.g. object databases).

Rules

This concept is designed to be a more flexible and intuitive way of handling relationships between groups of data fields.

• A "type" is a way of representing data in all forms needed for using it (typically: internal/native, storage, and display).
• A "field" is a named slot that has a particular type and belongs to a record.
• A "cell" is a field that contains particular data and belongs to exactly one record.
• A "record" consists of any collection of cells.
• A "record template" consists of any collection of fields.
• A "table" consists of a collection of records, and may have

Notes: fields have parents, that's how they get grouped; parent is also a field? we do need to be able to do hierarchy somehow, anyway.