Topincs: A Software for Rapid Development of Web Databases

Abstract

Topincs is a software for rapid development of web databases on top of the familiar LAMP stack. It overcomes the slow development of rigid RDBMS based applications by using the semantic technology Topic Maps. A Topincs store is developed by modeling a Topics Maps schema. This schema is used for form generation and powers a virtual domain specific OOP interface which is used in services to transform, aggregate, and modify the data. Topincs takes over well known usage patterns from the traditional wiki, but replaces markup authoring with a form based approach for data entry. In addition any technological jargon is hidden from the user. This combination minimizes the entry barrier, so that a new user who is familiar with the domain of the web database can be pointed to the start page from where he can follow his nose.