Ideas for table design knowledgebase

[Tony McDonald]

I'm trying to design a simple local knowledge base
database for my office who handle lots of phone queries
and would love to be able to use the ms one as a template
(ha!)
Any kindly soul out there like to share ideas for db
design of knowledgebase similiar to microsofts standard ?

I'm looking for a basic design of tables with particular
reference to the problems asscoiated with text searching
and display. Any help appreciated.

 

[Tim Ferguson]

I'm looking for a basic design of tables with particular
reference to the problems asscoiated with text searching
and display. Any help appreciated.

You could start with an Answers table with probably something like a memo
field for the actual text, and a table of Keywords, and a table of
KeywordAllocations to link the keywords to the answers. A couple of queries
to gather answers for a given arbitary set of keywords, and you are up and
running.

The hardest part is going to be user interface I would guess. Oh -- and
keeping it up to date.

I would have thought there must be ready made solutions with the web
interface already built.

B Wishes


Tim F

 

[John Vinson]

Any kindly soul out there like to share ideas for db
design of knowledgebase similiar to microsofts standard ?

hopefully a somewhat higher standard than THAT... <g, d & r>

 

[John Nurick]

Hi Tony,

Relational database systems like Access work require that the data be
fitted into a consistent and rigid structure. They don't have elegant
built-in ways of storing and searching loosely-structured text data.

It's certainly possible to build a very effective searchable
"knowledgebase" in Access. But unless (a) you already understand your
formal and informal business processes, the information you need to
store, and how to retrieve it much better than most businesses do, and
(b) you're already familiar with relational database design and
programming, it will be a lot of work for a product that may well not be
useful in practice.

Insted I suggest that you start by looking at self-indexing free-text
database software such as Idealist (www.bekon.com), InfoSelect
(http://www.miclog.com/is/index.shtml) or AskSam
(http://www.asksam.com/). You may find that with a little customisation
one of these will provide everything your users need - with the
flexibility to handle the unforeseen.

 

[Tim Ferguson]

Insted I suggest that you start by looking at self-indexing free-text
database software such as Idealist (www.bekon.com),

I used to use Idealist a lot, when it was published by Blackwell for a
sensible price. The early versions were fast and pretty bug-free. Nowadays
it's a fortune for a single license, which takes it way out of the cheap-
and-cheerful use-it-for-everything market where it belongs. Which is a
shame.

All the best


Tim F

 

[John Nurick]

I used to use Idealist a lot, when it was published by Blackwell for a
sensible price. The early versions were fast and pretty bug-free.

I found the 16-bit versions a bit unstable but they seldom lost data.
With a 32-bit version (5.00 in my case) on Windows 2000 it's been rock
solid and very fast.

Nowadays
it's a fortune for a single license, which takes it way out of the cheap-
and-cheerful use-it-for-everything market where it belongs. Which is a
shame.

According to the Bekon website it's GBP 149.50 (USD 279) for a single
user, with discounts starting after 5 users. This is well outside the
cheap-and-cheerful range, but it compares well with AskSam, where if you
want full-text indexing you have to get the Pro version at USD 395.00
for a single user, with unspecified discounts. Even the current version
of InfoSelect - which when I first met it was a cheap-and-cheerful DOS
TSR - is now USD 159.95 if you want a CD-ROM.