[Mediawiki-l] How about some design help?!

[Nelson A Li]

Hello MediaWikiers,

I have learned some basic skills about mediawiki and it is time to test the
water.  Headstart in a correct direction can save a lot of trouble later
on.  If you have some time (relative term, some people can achieve a lot in
a short time) and are willing to help, please do.

The task:
Initially I will display a table (this page can not be edited) with the ID
and Name columns shown.  Each row is a record for one specific user (or a
group).  Each user (or group) can click on the ID column of the record
specific to the user to link to a page and update contents of the fields
(including Name but not ID) of the record.  There is an "update" button on
that page will trigger (when pressed) the database update from user inputs
and the updated table will be displyed right away.

My problem is that I don't have a clear picture what can (or should) be
done inside wiki and what has to be done manually outside wiki as well as
how many existing mediawiki features I can use?

My thoughts:
Since the table structure is relatively stable (means may change, but not
often) , I can easily create a page with the table defined in it.  I have
all the record ID (alphnumeric, variable length) and Name (fixed length
string) listed in a text file line by line.  So I can easily write a php
program to create a table in MySQL, read this file and populate that table.
But how do I tell my wiki to read from that table to display the table?

The most tricky thing is to secure data/page against user.  Since the user
is specific to a (even more than one should be fine) record, I intend to
make user ID a field in the table (in DB but not displyed).  What kind of
user ID shall I use?  Do I manually collect user IDs and populate the DB
first?   Is there an intelligent way to mange the user <-> record <->
record update page relations.  Is it necessary (or any advantage) to use
registered user only?

I am sure there will be lots of details that I can not think of yet.  But I
need help to think through the high level design first.  Thank you.

Nelson

Computer Sciences Corporation
Registered Office: 2100 East Grand Avenue, El Segundo California 90245, USA
Registered in USA No: C-489-59

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