# The Magic of Small Databases
source: https://ift.tt/jbP54y6 tags: #literature #inbox #relational-thinking #living-well #productivity uid: 202301292232 —
We’ve built many tools for publishing to the web - but I want to make the claim that we have underdeveloped the tools and platforms for publishing collections, indexes and small databases. It’s too hard to build these kinds of experiences, too hard to maintain them and a lack of collaborative tools.
But it shows some of the potential use cases where people are looking for “database publishing”.
Let’s think through the kinds of use cases and functionality that is important. I’d say that the core features are:
- Creating collections of objects
- Adding and updating metadata for the objects (ideally in bulk if needed)
- Creating collections, relationships and pathways through the data
- Collaborating on these with others
- Publishing to the web in an easy to consume way, with stable URLs, search etc
- Open standard file formats for export / import / desktop editing
I’d like to call out Datasette in particular. Datasette is “An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data” created and maintained by Simon Willison.
Of all the projects I’ve come across Datasette feels so closely ideologically aligned to what I want. It’s open source, Simon really cares about helping non-developers use it (via a cloud product, a desktop product etc) - it’s even building out web-scraping functionality! Datasette is like a swiss army knife tool for exploring data but also allows you to publish that data to the web.