EMWCon Spring 2018/Achieving a unified data model with Cargo and Page Forms

Achieving a unified data model with Cargo and Page Forms


Presenter     Yaron Koren
Event Enterprise MediaWiki Conference (EMWCon) Spring 2018
Date and time
Reference Slides, YouTube link


For users of any combination of Cargo, Semantic MediaWiki and Page Forms, maintaining a complete data structure has long been a source of pain. Just changing the name of a single template parameter can require modifying a template, a form, query pages, query forms, (if you're using SMW) a property page, and possibly (if you're also using Semantic Drilldown) the category page as well. Various solutions have been created to let users define a single data model that is then used to generate, and re-generate, all these pages. The most notable is the Page Schemas extension, but there are various others, mostly proprietary. However, it may be possible to achieve a solution that, instead of adding more complexity (by adding another system), reduces complexity, by automating as much as possible the forms and queries around a data structure. In this way, it may be possible to create an entire data structure using only a template. Cargo is the obvious choice to enable this sort of thing, since, unlike SMW, it lets you define entire classes/tables of data; though in theory SMW could be extended to also allow this sort of definition.

This talk will cover what is already possible as far as a streamlined data structure, what is currently in the works, and how this could be fully implemented in the future.