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Whitman Education Database System

Spring 2000

http://www.whitman.edu/offices_departments/education/database/

One of our education professors wanted to develop a database system to allow his students to catalog useful education links. The main initial restriction was that he wanted to use a Macintosh as the web server and to host the database (neither are ideal uses for a Macintosh), which severely limited our flexibility. We also needed to develop a basic workflow to allow him editorial control over the content being sent to the database.

Skills, Technologies, Etc.

HTML, Javascript, Perl/ CGI, CDML(Filemaker Pro's proprietary markup language)

My Role:

Lead Developer, Lead Designer

Results:

Our database system of choice was ultimately Filemaker Pro, which has limited capabilities (not to mention it's own markup language), but was sufficient for our needs.

Development consisted primarily of some simple design work and construction and deployment of a variety of upload forms. CGI-scripts allowed us to use a simple, flat-file as a temporary database for the purpose of reviewing and approving submissions. Approval used Filemaker's CDML language to enable connection with the database itself.

In the end, it was not an ideal solution, but given what we had to work with, it worked well. The system gets the job done, but it would have problem with a broader audience