Database (urd) Design Strategy

[armsys]

What would be the most optimal strategy to Database Design as far as UR is concerned?
My understanding at Kinook all data are centralized and consolidated in a single urd. My concern about such strategy is the likelihood of attracting a great deal of noise when searching.
Just imagine mixing Info Items on R&D, tech support, marketing & sales, to-do lists, travel plan, lecture notes, readings,...etc.
Or should we separate all above-mentioned Info Items into separate urds.

Armstrong

[ashwken]

armsys,

I still don't fully understand when to use a Keyword vs Attribute (logical), not sure which has more power in Searching but both seem like valid pathes to categorization.

An additional level of search refinement can come from searching on (Item) is (Template Name). In your example there are more than a half-dozen categories that could be differieniated with Templates. This also allows you to store your saved searches outside there respective search pathes.

Linking or Storing External Files - a lot depends on if your usage is personal or distributed. You might want to consider storing your data files in a sub-folder structure below the urd, then all linking pathes are relative.

There's some additional discussion here:
http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1031

The ability to search across databases would probably help with some of these design decesions.

I'd like to hear more on these topics also.

[armsys]

Personally I love user-defined keywords because it allows more personal and biased classification of Info Items subject to your then mood and inclination. In addition, the search results can be more refined and focused if Search only user-defined keywords is switched on.

Here primarily my interest is to fid out how UR useres structure their urd, in general, and whether they use one urd for all or multiple urds for different/individual purpose/goal/project. Though UR appears to promote the concept of storing all Info Items into one URD, I take the liberty to explore other possible practical urd designs which definitively promote daily productity day in and day out, that will benefit all UR users.

Armstrong

[ashwken]

Originally posted by armsys
Just imagine mixing Info Items on R&D, tech support, marketing & sales, to-do lists, travel plan, lecture notes, readings,...etc.

I guess it becomes a question of scale. If these areas of interests (categories or departments) were from the perspective of an individual contractor, then structuring a single database could probably handle the divergent tasks. Even scaling this to a small office could work. If we're talking different departments within a company, then you may have to look at different urds for each department.

The suggestion of creating Templates for most of your needs will help to focus searching for divergent types of Items.

For example, you have a category R&D which lends itself to being a parent whose children are Projects. Create a Template for this Project Item, base it on the Text Template, create some Attributes that describe and allow you to track the Project, create a Form for these (and/or other) Attributes and the assign the Form to the Project Template.

Perhaps a Project has a standard group of tasks, if you can get by using the default Task Template use it as the basis for each of the required tasks. You could then build a new nested template from these individuals. The Default Template for nested_Project could be the default Task Template (or something else).

Create a folder off the root for R&D, it's Default Template could be the nested_Project Template above.

Because each of these Items is based on a specific Template, this becomes a condition in your search, the state of other Attributes for an Item can be further specified in the search.

Something else to consider is that UR can map Windows File Properties, if you're using MS Office and have this Summary Information setup it can be a real time saver.

I am also curious as to how others approach these problems.

[armsys]

Hi ashwken,

Thanks for attracting my attention to Document Summary. Indeed, it's very helpful.

For the time being, I'm more inclined to embrace of the concept of multiple urds rather than the one big urd to ensure the search performance won't be degraded as the file size increases.

Armstrong

[armsys]

Eventually I find the UR database question could be boiled down to one very practical question which matters you and me.

What's your actual user experience and feeling in using multiple urds concurrently?

Of course, our UR database can always be broken into multiple urds may it be personal, professional, legal, GTD, R&D, marketing & sales, technical issues tracking,...etc. So far so good as long as it's technically doable. How about:
1. Do you actually open multiple urds simultaneously and add/delete/edit/print/search Info Items across multiple urds on a daily basis?
2. Do you like constantly tracking the multiple urds, which to which, by pressing F6 or Alt+W?
3. Productivity can be improved by one mega urd or multiple urds, which one is predominantly advantageous?

I understand Kinook uses only one mega urd. There must be some motivating reason. Hope Kinook could offer us some insight.

I hope more experienced UR members could be kind enough to share their valuable UR experiences with us.

Armstrong