Re: Core data model - binding question
Re: Core data model - binding question
- Subject: Re: Core data model - binding question
- From: John Timmer <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 22:13:45 -0400
My first thought is that you should always plan your data model to include
all features you eventually hope to add. Converting data between different
.mom versions can be problematic, so you should structure things for the
future, even if you can't use everything properly now. If you're going to
eventually create a separate author object, do it now. Besides, lots of
academic works have more than one author.
The second thought is wandering a bit off Cocoa, but my sense is that for
data like this, it's entered once, but may be viewed countless times.
Structure your data for the viewing. In general, you have to write code
anyway for object creation, so writing some extra code to link the objects
up during their creation is not such a big deal. Users also accept a bit of
a delay after hitting the "OK" button when entering something, but are less
tolerant of a sluggish interface, so make the viewing code as simple as
possible.
JT
PS - what are you doing your thesis in?
> Thanks a million John, you are giving me such an invaluable help in
> focusing where the real trouble is.
> Sorry for giving little details at first, I didn't realise how linked
> to the data structure this problem is.
> I'll try to explain why my interface data is not consonant with my
> data structure. The interface whose snapshot are illustrated here
> ( http://www.cnomania.it/garage/appreference.htm ) is "half" of my
> GUI. As you see there are 2 tabs; the first one is used to introduce
> data in the database, the second one (the one we are discussing) is
> for just browsing. This app is targeted at academic researchers, me,
> in particular; its aim is to keep all of my phd annotations together.
> This is why every passage (which is actuallly a note, or a quote ) is
> linked to a specific entry (a book, or an article, or a web page).
> The Topic entity represents a thematic flag: a quote might be linked
> to "chaos theory", "indeterminacy" and "jakobson linguistic". So each
> passage is linked to one or more quotes.
> My browser GUI, the one I am discussing here, is meant at exploring
> my notes in a different, and more natural way. You wonder, "where did
> I read about indeterminacy?" and boom you see the authors you have
> read, and then you choose the book, and then you read the note you
> took. This is why this interface is "twisted". I guess this is the
> same metaphor that is behind iTunes: genres, author, album, song, but
> I think the data model follows another order...
> Now I am really wondering if there is a better way to structure the
> data. I had planned to add an independent author entity in a more
> advanced development stage; I am still learning, and I wanted to add
> authors in elegant way, with a NSFormatter to recognise name and
> surname. Do you think I should add an author entity right now? Should
> this Author entity be linked to both book and passages, maybe as a
> fetched property?
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