Argentine Tango is a movement form for couples, transformed by Europe and the American systems into a dance that is barely recognizable. Rock and roll, following on the tail of swing, took over the young minds of the world and there was a twenty-year gap in the transfer of knowledge. While the Peron administration loved and took part in Tango, their desire to suppress sedition hindered meetings of the men who shared the 80-year old secrets of the subtle twists and slight shifts that brought couples together in an intricate walking embrace.
Nowadays, the form of Tango that developed in Buenos Aires is spreading throughout the world, this time more authentically. Unfortunately, there is a very small supply of the aging dancers who spent decades developing their technique. As such, students are clamoring to find and follow particular teachers throughout the world to learn from them and simultaneously practice with other students.
Presently, information about Argentine Tango events is broadcast around the world on one particular mailing list. This information, while manageable, requires every recipient dealing with email and extracting their information. There is no easy way to extract the information.
Even searching (e.g. by Google) for teachers and events is difficult without knowledge of Spanish or which teacher is which, especially with nicknames ("El Pulpo", the octopus. ... and, just in case you're wondering, that's from what he does with his legs.)
It is still important for local websites to host the information about Festivals (events that combine teaching and dancing) within reach of their area or of particular interest to students of the host. (There are several styles of Argentine Tango that developed in the different sections of Buenos Aires, all authentic but, because tango is so subtle, sometimes incompatible within a set of music with the same partner).
For example, one of the most thorough web sites is produced locally ( http://tango.havetodance.com ). On one page, events are listed. It's a somewhat random selection for a New England regional web site. It's what people send him.
Note the similarity in information for each, - Title, Dates, Location, number of dances, number of classes, instructor pairings, links to instructor websites
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Stowe, Vermont. 2007 dates to be determined (as of 03/30/07, the dates on their website were for 2006).
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Benson is happy to enter any information that is sent to him. However every email he gets is different and many producers forget to inform him of last minute changes. Occasionally he gets tired.
What is needed is an easy way to get information about events and extract it into personal web sites. This allows for personal creativity and decreases the anxiety about publishing correct information.
Why XML? Because that is this class and because it is easy to examine by people interested in using the data.
Aspects of the project
- Security:
It will be impossible to prevent trouble-makers from entering data on the list. However, all data can have attributes identifying the submitter. These attributes can be removed after inappropriate data is filtered out by the requester. - World regions have already been assigned by the Tango-A mailing list.
- There will form interface for entering data about - Events,
-Teachers, -Teacher pairing, etc.
The form will allow for the addition of extra elements that will be flagged for the database creator (i.e. me) to integrate into the design (Extensability). - History: All information will be date stamped.
This allows people to:- through time to see what teachers have not been to certain locations in a while.
- see when submissions or corrections were made.
- allow conflicting information to co-exist and latest information supersede others.
- People who submit will be assigned an ID and password. (Again the world of tango is easy to reach)
- Information can be edited by Event or Teacher. There will also be a Master Editor (form undetermined).
- Web masters can ask for output in a certain form, created by XSL templates (that will probably be generated by other XSL templates).
- One master web page that will allow multiple views of the data, achieved through various parameter-rich XSL transformations.
I am concerned about the size of the database. What size can be managed?
Is there any standard practice for being open but secure for such a database?