MOT-2 web database Alpha2 Release

As posted to C.O.L.A.

Hey all,

This is the second alpha release of MOT-2 and the first release that
I've widely announced.

MOT-2 is a generally useful web database that can be used to create
web-based databases without writing a single line of code (sql, php, or
html!).  It is my hope that MOT-2 will be used to create anything from
job and project tracking systems, to inventories, to catalogues and
pretty much any other relatively simple, web-based databases.

Best of all, MOT-2 is free software, released under the GPL.

Check out the MOT home page or download the package directly:

http://tomato.nvgc.vt.edu/~hroberts/mot
ftp://tomato.nvgc.vt.edu/pub/mot/mot-2.0.a2.tar.gz

Here's the rest of the pertinent info from the README file:

FEATURES

Except for a couple of features (see the NOTES file), MOT-2 has all of
its major functionality in place.  To demonstrate MOT-2, I have
rewritten its predecessor MOT-1, a job and equipment tracking system,
entirely in MOT-2.

However, MOT-2 should not be considered a production ready system at
this point, mainly because it has not been tested on any system but my
own.  Also, there are a couple things left to implement (most
importantly the ability to save and load -- and therefore share --
database schemas) before the system can be considered fully functional.

Nonetheless, MOT-2 is quite powerful already, and I encourage you to
download it and play with it, or even use it for simple datbases (todo
and address lists, for example). MOT-2's features include:

* The ability to create and modify databases, tables, fields, and\
  permissions, all from a point and click, web interface.
* Support for links between tables.  Jobs may be linked to users,
  equipment, and software.  People may be linked to department, companies,
  contacts, and machines.
* Support for multiple users and read, add, and modify permissions for
  each user for each table.
* Support for sorting and restricting every table to a fully
  configurable set of fields (sort a list of jobs by priority, close date,
  or tech, or restrict the same list of jobs to a specified contact).
* Support for actions, which are custom scripts automatically fired by
  specified database actions (adds, modifications, etc.).  This is
  immensely helpful for implementing things like email notification and
  timestamping.
* Basic support for writing custom sql queries.  This will eventually
  include a custom query page but is very helpful now in the creation of
  actions.  A sample mot_sql query that joins three tables together and
  grabs a value from the third table looks like:

**
select {People}.[email] from {Jobs}   where
{Jobs}.[id] = $row_id
**
WEB PAGE

The official MOT web page is at

http://tomato.nvgc.vt.edu/~hroberts/mot

There's not much there right now, since I've been spending all of my
free time coding.  I'll eventually spruce it up a bit, but I'd love
someone to volunteer some help ...

DOCUMENTATION

There is none, yet.  As you can see from the NOTES file, it's on my list
of stuff to do.  Of course, I'd be eternally grateful if anyone wanted
to jump in and volunteer ...

INSTALLATION
See the install file for instruction on how to install MOT-2.

HISTORY

MOT-2 is an outgrowth of MOT-1, a web based job and equipment tracking
system.  Basically, I started thinking about how to make more MOT-1 more
configurable and ended up generalizing the whole thing, until it became
a generally useful database instead of just a configurable job
tracking system.

TODO

See the NOTES file for notes on what I'm working on.

CREDITS

Most of the credit for MOT-2 should go to the wizards who created the
tools upon which it is based - mysql, php, apache, linux, and the usual
gang of free software tools that I used in its development. All I've
really done is cobble together other people's hard work.

--hal
hroberts@storystreet.com
2/14/99
..