Piggydb - A knowledge creation system
Piggydb is a Web notebook application that provides you with a platform to build your knowledge personally or collaboratively.
With Piggydb, you can create highly structured content by connecting knowledge fragments to each other to build a network structure, which is more flexible and expressive than a tree structure. Fragments can also be classified using hierarchical tags.
Piggydb does not aim to be an input-and-search database application. It aims to be a platform that encourages you to organize your knowledge continuously to discover new ideas or concepts, and moreover enrich your creativity.
- Easy to install, no configuration required
- For private use, from one person to small groups of people
- Put the focus on the process of organizing information
- Why Piggydb?
"Piggydb is a great way to organize everything everything I thought I
knew. I've tried everything from wikis to piles of text files. Either
the extra features get in the way, or content is difficult to find.
Piggydb is the perfect balance between simplicity and power. I love it
for everything from organizing papers for research projects to keeping
track of which markets have the nicest produce."
- Michael Mior
"if I learn, say, about 'A' today, tomorrow about 'B' and then
learning about 'C' changes my perspective on the nature of 'A' or
its relation to 'B' - re-classification will be needed. so
while I can describe my knowledge today, tomorrow may be different;
furthermore, relations may of course be conditional, with all that implies for management and structure.
I really see piggydb as a tool primarily useful in the early stages of knowledge acquisition"
"Great, neat piece of software that matches exactly my needs in anything to do with knowledge management;
power and simplicity in the same package. Thank you very much for the time invested."
- Review at SourceForge.net
Piggydb est une application Web de base de connaissance (knowledge management), simple d’installation et d’utilisation. Son intérêt principal vient de son approche radicalement différente des autres solutios du marché. En effet, cette application conçoit la connaissance non plus sous la forme d’articles mais sous la forme d’éléments indépendants que l’on peut regrouper, lier, plier, déplier, agréger ou mettre en arborescence selon les cas.
Une autocomplétion et une exploration dynamique des arborescences rendent son utilisation très intuitive à tel point que lire une documentation n’est pas nécessaire pour apprécier cette application dans son utilisation basique !
- Jimmy Goffaux
Demo
¶
- Table Tennis Videos (view-only demo)
- Sand box (editable demo)
- You can login with the guest account (guest/guest).
- The owner-only features are disabled.
- The database might be cleared without a notice. It's just a demo.
Getting Started
¶
To run Piggydb, you need to have Java 5.0(1.5) or later.
It really takes very little time and effort to get Piggydb running on your machine with an all-in-one package.
- Download the latest version of an all-in-one package
- Unzip distribution
- Double-click run.bat (Windows), or run run.sh (Unix, Linux, Mac OS X)
- Start up a browser and go to http://localhost:8080
- Login with the owner account (owner/owner).
If you already have a servlet container, such as Tomcat, then you can download
war distribution.
- NOTE
- You should change owner's password immediately after the first login (Menu [System/Change Password]).
Settings
¶
All-in-One Package
The database files will be created in ~/piggydb/ (If you use Windows, the location is: C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\piggydb), and the database name is "piggydb" by default.
If you want to change the location of the database files or the database name, you can do it via the Java system properties "piggydb.database.prefix" and "piggydb.database.name", respectively. You can set the system properties by modifying run.bat or run.sh.
If you want to use an absolute path for the database directory ("piggydb.database.prefix"), you should use a URL which starts with "file:"
- Windows example: file:C:/path/to/database
- The above means the database location is C:\path\to\database
- Linux or Mac OS X example: file:/path/to/database
- The above means the database location is /path/to/database
War Package
The database files will be created in ~/piggydb/ and the database name will be determined by the context path, which is basically a war name. If you deploy a war file named "myknowledge.war", then the database name will be "myknowledge". If the context path is null, then the database name will be "piggydb".
This auto war-database mapping allows you to deploy multiple piggydbs with separate databases on the same JEE server more easily (NOTE: This feature is available only with servlet 2.5 (tomcat 6.x) or later, otherwise the database name will be "piggydb").
If you want to configure the settings manually, modify "application.properties" in <extracted-war>/WEB-INF/config.
User Management
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The user management system is built into the piggydb's semantics seamlessly.
Piggydb has only one user ("owner") by default, but you can create other users just by creating fragments titled "username" and tagged with "#user" tag. These fragments are called "User Fragment", which can be created, changed, or deleted only by an owner.
- The default password is the same as the user name.
- If you create a fragment titled "marubinotto" and tagged with "#user", you can login with marubinotto/marubinotto.
- You can manage the users in exactly the same way as fragments, classifying with tags, connecting to other fragments, and so on.
Anonymous Access
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Piggydb allows only authenticated (logged in) users to view, edit content by default. But the anonymous access feature has been available since version 4.4. You can enable anonymous access to let users view content without a login (anonymous users can only view content, but not register, edit or delete knowledge fragments).
To enable anonymous access, change the Java system property "piggydb.enableAnonymous" value to "true" by modifying run.bat or run.sh if you use an all-in-one package.
In both the packages, you can change the "piggydb.enableAnonymous" value via the application config file: <extracted war>/WEB-INF/config/application.properties. This setting will be applied when you restart the application.
Contribute
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You can contribute to the development of Piggydb by sending feedback, bug reports and feature requests via: