During the last upgrade of the Wiki software one of the extensions included was something called "Cargo". Part of the Semantic Mediawiki family of extensions it allows data to be stored in the Mediawiki database. Well in a more database like fashion. Rather than the Mediawiki way of parsing blocks of text.
If you are at all familiar with SQL database (like the MySQL database used by the wiki), Cargo defines a Mediawiki friendly interface to insert and query data from tables for specific information.
Over the past two month's we've been working on getting the stellar data: world with their UWPs, T5 Second survey data, and the Trade Map generated data into Cargo tables in a way that can make the wiki look better.
For our example, look at Mongo: http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Mongo_(world)
The complete sidebar and the two sections at the top of the page are all generated (automatically) from the data in Cargo tables and several wiki templates. Changing the data because there was a mistake in the data entry, a update from the canon police, or a new information comes to light is straight forward. And automatically updates the page(s).
With data in a database you can, of course, present it in several different formats: For example Spinward Marches in the T5 Second Survey data file format.
The Cargo extension provides a nice drill down / search interface for looking through the data in the system. It let's us find the weird mistakes, typos, and exceptions to the data we need to fix. And you can use it to find that specific world you need for your game.
The system also comes with an ability to export some or all of the data in more computer friendly JSON or CSV format. If you want access to data like this let me know. Setting it up is simple, but not pretty.
We're not anywhere close to done with getting the data into the database, and as people look at the data we'll find new ways to use it.
If you are at all familiar with SQL database (like the MySQL database used by the wiki), Cargo defines a Mediawiki friendly interface to insert and query data from tables for specific information.
Over the past two month's we've been working on getting the stellar data: world with their UWPs, T5 Second survey data, and the Trade Map generated data into Cargo tables in a way that can make the wiki look better.
For our example, look at Mongo: http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Mongo_(world)
The complete sidebar and the two sections at the top of the page are all generated (automatically) from the data in Cargo tables and several wiki templates. Changing the data because there was a mistake in the data entry, a update from the canon police, or a new information comes to light is straight forward. And automatically updates the page(s).
With data in a database you can, of course, present it in several different formats: For example Spinward Marches in the T5 Second Survey data file format.
The Cargo extension provides a nice drill down / search interface for looking through the data in the system. It let's us find the weird mistakes, typos, and exceptions to the data we need to fix. And you can use it to find that specific world you need for your game.
The system also comes with an ability to export some or all of the data in more computer friendly JSON or CSV format. If you want access to data like this let me know. Setting it up is simple, but not pretty.
We're not anywhere close to done with getting the data into the database, and as people look at the data we'll find new ways to use it.
