PiggyDB

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.