Advice from the gurus of Web 2.0 required

[andrewducker]

We're currently seeing a resurgence of collaboration software - I've seen Word and Excel clones for the web. But I'm not seeing anyone allowing for structured data - is there anyone out there selling access to a MySQL database with a pretty front end stuck on the front of it, so that people can share lists of things?

The data is currently being stored in Excel spreadsheets being emailed back and forth, and frankly it's (a) perfect for sticking in a database table, as it's just text stored in columns and (b)silly to be emailing it back and forth rather than sticking it on a server. But nobody seems to be selling pretty front ends for structured lists...

Anyone help me with this?

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Strikes me that Ning should do just that.

You should be able to build it yourself pretty quickly using some AMP implementation or other...

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Isn't that a sledgehammer to crack a nut? If all you want to do is share access to the contents of a table (oh, and ensure that you can't have two people saving slightly different new versions over each other - which is done more or less automatically by the old fashioned mailing files back and forth approach).

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Well, Ning's strongly typed data soup is a useful tool for handling that sort of problem.

However, yes, in practice I'd be more inclined to knock up a simple form-driven app in PHP that would manage a directory where the data was stored as XML, and use the built in PHP XML parser to handle display and edit, where the content of the XML was used to build the form on the fly - giving you an editable surface with write-back and simple file locking...

/me goes off and codes...

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Basecamp and Backpack from 47signals.com sound like a fit too. And they are chock full of that Ruby on Rails noise all the hipster kids are crazy about.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Agree w/above - Ruby on Rails should do the trick fairly easily if you have that platform.

.NET also has their generic DataGrid / DataList for web access. At its most basic level, you bind it to a DataSet (which you can connect to MySql using a standard SQL query and the System.Data.OleDb.DataAdapter object), and it generates the HTML layout. You can automate paging, editing, and other cool stuff.

The problem is if you want to get even slightly away from what Microsoft thinks you want, you have to tear out all that automated code and start hacking at it. I hear .NET 2.0 has more flexibility, but haven't messed with that lately.

At the most base level, you can port out MySql to XML, and then use XSLT to generate a web page. However, having the ability to either edit that XML, or provide continuous integration between MySql and XML would be kind of a pain.

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

SubEthaEdit is by far the best collaborative text-editor I've ever come across. Unfortunately, it's a mongoose and doesn't really like nuts (or tables). But I know that it would probably be quite easy to write an extension for it for tables, and having a mysql backend too...hmn...Pity it's mac only (almost) :P.

[aberbotimue.livejournal.com]

Is this just to see the data, and manipulate it, or do the users need to alter and feedback too?