Research project suitable for drupal?
Hello,
I am part of of non commercial research project, of which the main the deliverable is based around a mysql / php driven website.
The important part is the content though, rather than us developing it from scratch, so no worries there.
In a nut shell, the site will be a type of 'troubleshooting' service where users can identify issues they have (and see what issues others have) and find possible strategies to over come them. We need it so that users can come at the info from several different routes, ie you may look for issues based on the difficulty(ies) the issue relates to, the application(s) it relates to etc
I have designed the database to support this and my next step will be to build the forms using php/html but I'm not sure how quick at this I will be, which has caused me to look at possible alternative development strategies.
how flexible is drupal? is there any facility for building forms based on the database design? Many of the tables are 'related' to each other. say for example, we used drupal and were adding an issue to the Issue table of the database, could we also set the form to allow us to select the difficulties it relates to and update another table based on this selection?
i'm not so worried about the presentation of the content as I believe I can do that, it is more the problem of getting the data into the database that is causing my head to spin!
any advice on whether drupal would be viable would be very much appreciated,
thank you for time
:)
I have some experience in
I have some experience in modifying drupal for my own use. You ask: how flexible is drupal? is there any facility for building forms based on the database design? The quick answer is "not".
However, I wonder if your database design for the purpose you intend is actually the best way to achieve your goal. You could scrap your design and use 'categories' in drupal to sort content according to issues, applications etc. That would save you a lot of time and may produce the results you seek. At http://www.passingphase.co.nz/eparty/media/ you will see I have categories of articles that users can go to at a click.
If you are intent on having a specific database then you need to look for open source software that best suits your needs. For instance moodle.org does an online campus, zen-cart.com does a shop, and catsone.com does a recruitment site. Do a search on open source research software. The difficulty of making drupal work for your particular needs would be similar to rewriting from scratch.
thank you
Ok, that's a pity. I think changing from my database design at this stage would be too much of a mindshift. thank you for replying though.
I don't have a lot of
I don't have a lot of experience creating Drupal modules, but it would be possible to implement your site in Drupal. It might even be possible to acheive what you want using existing modules like CCK, views, taxonomy, workflow and actions. However, it seems like this is not an option for you?
As for building your own module, although there is a good forms api I would say Drupal has quite a steep learning curve. If you don't intend to leverage a lot of the built-in Drupal functionality (forums, blogs, taxonomy, comments, themes, etc) then it will probably be quicker to roll your own.
Since you have a good idea of the database schema, have you considered using Ruby on Rails. It allows very rapid development but it's not PHP based. It can basically create a controller directly from your database and give you a scaffold website that you can then customize.