ProblemLibraryArchitecture

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from Message-ID: <20030321031124.H7821@gate.math.rochester.edu>.

This issue illustrates that there are some problems with the way we're storing problems and problem sets:

• fixed, 2-level heirarchy
• no problem metadata
• limiting naming scheme
• inconsistencies in naming
• difficult to search for problems

Dennis and I have been thinking about better ways to organize the problem library. Here are some of our current ideas:

• problems - store in SQL database
  • unique numeric id for each problem
  • rich, extensible metadata
    • name (naming scheme?)
    • description
    • author
    • topic(s)
    • difficulty
    • source
    • etc
  • store as RCS data
  • do we need to do versioning on metadata as well? what if v1.2 is more difficult than v1.3?

• problem sets - store in SQL database
  • separate from problem repository
  • heirarchical (by topic?)
  • consist of list of problem ids (and problem versions?)
  • metadata (similar to problem metadata)
  • versioning?

-- Main.SamHathaway - 10 Nov 2003

-- Main.SamHathaway - 19 Nov 2003