[pmwiki-devel] recipe configuration screens: best practice?

[ben at interdependentweb.com]

Quoting Crisses <crisses at kinhost.org>:
> Configuring queries in the first place is not something novice admins
> should take lightly.
>
> I'm not really understanding because I haven't seen any examples or
> documentation, so all of your questions are strictly theory, rather
> than seeing anything practical going on.
>
> What do you think the queries will look like?
>
> Would an admin want to give other people access to creating the
> queries, or is this something that ONLY the server-side admin would be
> likely to use?

Well, the model I'm imitating is Microsoft Access, where an  
administrator can set up a query through a graphical interface,  
without needing to learn SQL syntax, and then proceed to build forms  
and such based on the query just as if it were a table.  So the  
interface will look something like Access's query-building screen,  
only with drop-down menus instead of drag-and-drop.  I've started a  
mock-up on my development site, but it's not functional yet because  
I'm dithering about how to save the information, hence my question to  
the list.

My question again: generally speaking, is it preferable to save  
configuration information as page text variables (within the text  
field of a page), or as separate fields in the page?

 From the perspective of a PHP programmer, I'm inclined to use  
separate fields so that I can simply ReadPage($pagename) to get all  
the variables at once, whereas PageTextVar($pagename,$varname) would  
have to be called over and over again for each variable -- very  
inefficient.  But I can see how it would be useful for wiki admins to  
be able to use the history action to restore previous versions of a  
query if they made a mistake.

Thanks again for your feedback!  --Ben