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PiggyDB
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Posted by Carrot
Sep 10, 2012 at 10:29 AM
Is PiggyDB quite similar to ConnectedText?
What do you see as the major differences?
Can they be used for largely the same type of project?
I’ve just purchased a QDA program to finish organizing my research data.
Later, once I’ve got more free time, I will re-work the data using another program like ConnectedText or PiggyDB.
I would prefer to use an open-source application, but if CT is really much better than everything else for organizing Rich Text data, then I’ll just get a license.
Thanks for any advice.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 10, 2012 at 07:09 PM
To copy from the accolade that I read of one of my favourite CDs, that is a “very excellent” question :-)
I hadn’t considered Piggydb as a wiki, but that has most to do with its aesthetics than anything else. As in any wiki including Connected Text, you can relate any ‘fragment’ (topic in CT) to any other. However, such relationships are not made via internal links (‘wikiwords’) which are part of the topic text, but by dragging a connector from one fragment to the other. Relationships can be uni- or omni-directional and are shown underneath the fragment.
Pdb also employs hierarchical tags as a second organisational approach. Tags and relationships are used complementarily which I find a very fexible approach. You can read more on Pdb’s organisational philosophy here http://piggydb.net/2012/06/20/the-piggydb-way-1-tag-as-concept-over-tag-as-index/ and in related posts.
CT from its part can provide structure within topics themselves. In Pdb, fragments are just that, with the possible addition of attachments.
Aside from other CT advantages described here in the past, by Dr Andus in particular, CT is a much more mature product. For example, unless I am missing something, there is no way to export Pdb content, other than opening each fragment one by one as a document (it opens in a separate browser tab) and saving it. But then, all the interlinkages are lost.
In short, for the moment I do not believe that the two products are comparable, but in the future who knows? The Pdb developer is clearly dedicated.
Carrot wrote:
>Is PiggyDB quite similar to ConnectedText?
>What do you see as the major
>differences?
>
>Can they be used for largely the same type of project?
>
>I’ve just
>purchased a QDA program to finish organizing my research data.
>Later, once I’ve got
>more free time, I will re-work the data using another program like ConnectedText or
>PiggyDB.
>I would prefer to use an open-source application, but if CT is really much
>better than everything else for organizing Rich Text data, then I’ll just get a
>license.
>
>Thanks for any advice.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 10, 2012 at 07:58 PM
I posted here http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4445/0/anybody-met-this-outliner
the following statement
>By the way, Piggydb is evolving nicely into a paradigm much more solid than wikis.
and Dr Andus, most undesrtandable, asked me to support it.
>That’s a bold claim ;) Would you care to elaborate? (I’m intrigued by Piggydb but haven’t had time to test drive it).
It makes sense to do so in the Piggydb thread. I’ve already posted just above the main characteristics of knowledge structring in Piggydb. I will now explain why I believe that this approach is more ‘solid’ than a wiki’s.
First of all, what do I mean by ‘solid’ in knowledge management? I refer to the extent that a tool supports an organisation of concepts conducive to higher levels of conceptualisation.
The way I see it, concepts are represented by ‘entities’ in the sense discussed here http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4266 i.e. different tools will use different kinds of entities as basic building blocks.
In a wiki, the entity is the wiki page. However, because the main connectors between pages are the hyperlinked words, it becomes easy to create pages with several concepts. Not so in Piggydb where, since the main connectors (relationships) are set for each entity (‘fragment’) as a whole, it supports the user to maintain only one concept per entity. I believe that this is conducive to mental discipline and to clearer descriptions of concepts.
Also, in a wiki, tags can be used to label pages, but they cannot be organised themselves—they are just part of a long flat list- so their contribution ends there. Piggydb allows the hierarchical organisation of tags, supporting conceptual development at the meta-level too. Assume that you are making a database of living organisms: you can have entities under hierarchical tags Kingdom / Phylum / Class / Order / Family / Genus / Species, as well as a multitude of other possible sets of terms.
By the way, here’s part of what the developer himself has written; if you follow his blog, it seems that he’s got a pretty clear vision:
http://piggydb.net/2012/09/25/lets-play-piggydb-knowledge-creation-1-on-writing-by-stephen-king/
Posted by Chris Murtland
Nov 10, 2012 at 09:15 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Also, in a wiki, tags can be used to label pages, but they cannot be
>organised themselves—they are just part of a long flat list- so their
>contribution ends there. Piggydb allows the hierarchical organisation of
>tags, supporting conceptual development at the meta-level too. Assume
>that you are making a database of living organisms: you can have
>entities under hierarchical tags Kingdom / Phylum / Class / Order /
>Family / Genus / Species, as well as a multitude of other possible sets
>of terms.
At least in ConnectedText, categories (which are the same as tags), can be placed into a hierarchy. Any tag can be in multiple tag hierarchies. And you don’t need to know in advance what your tag hierarchies are going to be, because you can tag the tags along the way (by placing any category page into one or more other categories). Finally, you can also limit a search to items contained within a particular tag tree.
I’m not sure if there are any online, collaborative wikis that have the same functionality, though.
Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 10, 2012 at 09:54 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>First of all, what do I mean by ‘solid’ in knowledge management? I refer
>to the extent that a tool supports an organisation of concepts conducive
>to higher levels of conceptualisation.
>
>In a wiki, the entity is the wiki page. However, because the main
>connectors between pages are the hyperlinked words, it becomes easy to
>create pages with several concepts. Not so in Piggydb where, since the
>main connectors (relationships) are set for each entity (‘fragment’) as
>a whole, it supports the user to maintain only one concept per entity. I
>believe that this is conducive to mental discipline and to clearer
>descriptions of concepts.
>
>Also, in a wiki, tags can be used to label pages, but they cannot be
>organised themselves—they are just part of a long flat list- so their
>contribution ends there. Piggydb allows the hierarchical organisation of
>tags, supporting conceptual development at the meta-level too. Assume
>that you are making a database of living organisms: you can have
>entities under hierarchical tags Kingdom / Phylum / Class / Order /
>Family / Genus / Species, as well as a multitude of other possible sets
>of terms.
Thanks very much for that Alexander, this is very interesting.
As Chris has just pointed out, you can implement that behaviour with CT, provided you know how to do it (so it’s down to a personal decision and also sufficient knowledge of the tools) and you stay disciplined in doing it. I think Manfred Kuehn seems to use CT like such a knowledge base as well (built out of fragments).
I, on the other hand, use CT very differently, for my current project at least, to some extent violating the wiki principle of staying with short fragments, partly because it works for me that way but also because CT doesn’t discipline/restrict me that way.
I can see the appeal of Piggydb, at least the way you describe it, if it indeed forces one to implement such a bottom-up fragment-building approach and makes it easy to do so. It sounds like it’s trying to implement a bottom-up, “reverse-cascade,” “bubbling up” type abstraction process from the detailed data to its abstractions, which is something I’m trying it emulate in CT as well.
How stable is Piggydb at this stage of its development? I looked into it a while ago but for some reason it didn’t feel like it was mature enough yet for mission-critical projects. Also, I’d want some easy import-export options, to switch stuff back and forth.