[Webcom] Service Provider Fix/Upgrade

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

I'm opening a new thread to discuss Adam Włodarkiewicz's suggested plan to
fix the Service Provider Directory which is currently broken due to the
mysterious loss of a page of PHP code, described in:

  http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/1105

Adam has suggested:
"""
I propose introducing a 'service provider' content type. This would give it
the advantage of customizable permissions and easy integration with views
among other Drupal goodness. Permissions can be configured to give editing
rights not just to osgeo.org maintainers, but any user with the correct
role (again, configurable in Drupal). Such role can be given to users who
are representatives of the service providers. Views module allows creation
of different kinds of lists and displays of content. A list containing only
the service provider content type would be trivial to create, much like
creating filters to limit the list to only service provider from a given
country, etc. Further more, this filter can be exposed to the user (for
example as a select box) and ajax can be used to refresh the list. As far
as I understand, this pretty much covers the current functionality and
more, in addition to being drupalish. All of the above mentioned
configuration can be done via clicking in the administration menu.

Importing existing entries can be easily done via a proper import module,
assuming it would not be too difficult to export the current data in, for
example, csv format.
"""

I'm slightly concerned that the filtering may be more clumsy than the
service provider directory.  Adam, can you point me at something similar
done with Drupal so I have a sense of what it might look like and interact
like?

I will note that the existing service provider directory is in a mysql table
- the same one as the drupal content.

Ian has also expressed interest in helping with this issue - Ian, do you
have thoughts on this approach?

Personally, it sounds pretty good to me.  I'm wondering if it is something
we could start prototyping on Drupal now and just not link to it from
anywhere prominent on the web site.  If there are no immediate concerns
I would be interesting in starting an experiment on this new content type
and filtering interaction and could arrange appropriate access for Adam.
Perhaps a motion covering the experiment would be appropriate to
gauge support.  I'd also include adding Adam to Webcom.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Software Developer