[ZDP] CoolFAQ design questions

[Paul Everitt]

> >Joe Van Andel asked the following question:
> >> I'm not quite clear on how Z-Tables will be used for 
> CoolFAQ.  Is each Q&A
> >> going to be stored in an entry in the Z-Table?  How do you plan to
> >> represent the "natural" outline structure that most FAQs 
> would want:
> >> Topic 1
> >>    Q1.1
> >>    Q1.2
> >>    Subtopic a
> >>         Q1.2.1
> >>    Subtopic b
> >> Topic 2
> >>    Q2.1
> >>    Q2.2

Sorry, I'm a little late in replying here.  No, Z Tables is _not_ an SQL
database, it just does some of the things an SQL database might be used
for.  (As well as some SQL doesn't, as well as not doing some things SQL
does.)

Z Tables has a nice solution to the above called a Hierarchy.  You can
add hierarchy objects to the FAQ that add pseudo-structures to the the
tabular structure.

For instance, say you have Topic and Subtopic as columns.  You create a
Hierarchy in the CoolFAQ object called Topics, telling it the first
level in the hierarchy comes from values in the Topic column and the
second from the Subtopic column.  This automatically makes the following
URLs work:

  /CoolFAQ/Topics/
  /CoolFAQ/Topics/manage
  /CoolFAQ/Topics/Topic1/
  /CoolFAQ/Topics/Topic1/manage

The Topics column appears to be a Folder in the CoolFAQ.  You can dive
into it and see a folderish management screen, allowing you to add
documents to format it and images etc.  You then see the Subtopics as
subfolders.  You can dive into them and add documents that format the
nodes differently.

The only nodes displayed are the ones for valid data in the Table.

Sorry, that's it for now...

--Paul