Database Layer

The center of the universe for the CSK is the Community_ContentPages table. This table contains all the important attributes for nearly anything that can be displayed in the CSK. As you can see in the following figure, the table can track titles, descriptions, ratings, view counts, and more. All of the attributes common to every module live here, and from this table the CSK builds the cross-module functionality we discussed in the previous diagram.

All of the modules start by placing an entry in the Community_ContentPages table. For example, a book’s title is kept in this table, as is the title for downloads and articles.

If a module has additional attributes to store, it can then create a second table linked to Community_ContentPages by contentPage_id. The Community_Books table stores attributes specific to a book, such as the ISBN and book author name, while the Community_Articles table keeps the complete text of all the articles in the system. Each of these module-specific...