TWiki

Last updated

TWiki
T-logo-235x67-t.png
Developer(s) Peter Thoeny
Initial release23 July 1998;22 years ago (1998-07-23)
Stable release
6.1.0 [1] / 2018-07-16 [±]
Preview release None (None) [±]
Repository
OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Written in Perl
Type Wiki
License GPL
Website twiki.org

TWiki is a Perl-based structured wiki application, [2] typically used to run a collaboration platform, knowledge or document management system, a knowledge base, or team portal. Users can create wiki pages using the TWiki Markup Language, and developers can extend wiki application functionality with plugins.

Contents

The TWiki project was founded by Peter Thoeny in 1998 as an open-source wiki-based application platform. In October 2008, the company TWiki.net, created by Thoeny, assumed full control over the TWiki project [3] while much of the developer community [4] [5] forked off to join the Foswiki project. [6]

Major features

TWiki extensions

TWiki has a plugin API that has spawned over 300 extensions [7] to link into databases, create charts, tags, sort tables, write spreadsheets, create image gallery and slideshows, make drawings, write blogs, plot graphs, interface to many different authentication schemes, track Extreme Programming projects and so on.

TWiki application platform

TWiki as a structured wiki provides database-like manipulation of fields stored on pages, [8] and offers a SQL-like query language to embed reports in wiki pages. [9]

Wiki applications are also called situational applications because they are created ad hoc by the users for very specific needs. Users have built TWiki applications [10] that include call center status boards, to-do lists, inventory systems, employee handbooks, bug trackers, blog applications, discussion forums, status reports with rollups and more.

User interface

The interface of TWiki is completely skinnable in templates, themes and (per user) CSS. It includes support for internationalization ('I18N'), with support for multiple character sets, UTF-8 URLs, and the user interface has been translated into Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. [11]

TWiki deployment

TWiki is primarily used at the workplace as a corporate wiki [12] to coordinate team activities, track projects, implement workflows [13] and as an Intranet Wiki. The TWiki community estimates 40,000 corporate wiki sites as of March 2007, and 20,000 public TWiki sites. [14]

TWiki customers include Fortune 500 such as Disney, Motorola, Nokia, NYU, Oracle Corporation and Yahoo!, as well as small and medium enterprises, [15] such as ARM Holdings [ dead link ] [16] and DHL. [17] TWiki has also been used to create collaborative internet sites, such as the City of Melbourne's FutureMelbourne wiki where citizens can collaborate on the future plan. [18]

Realization

TWiki is implemented in Perl. Wiki pages are stored in plain text files. Everything, including meta such as access control settings, are version controlled using RCS. RCS is optional since an all-Perl version control system is provided.

TWiki scales reasonably well even though it uses plain text files and no relational database to store page data. Many corporate TWiki installations have several hundred thousand pages and tens of thousands of users. Load balancing and caching can be used to improve performance on high traffic sites. [19]

TWiki has database features built into the engine. A TWiki Form [8] is attached to a page as meta data. This represents a database record. A set of pages that share the same type of form build a database table. A formatted search [20] with a SQL-like query [21] can be embedded into a page to construct dynamic presentation of data from multiple pages. This allows for building wiki applications and constitutes the TWiki's notion of a structured wiki.

TWiki release history

Forks of TWiki

Forks of TWiki include:

See also

Related Research Articles

MySQL SQL database engine software

MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter, and "SQL", the abbreviation for Structured Query Language. A relational database organizes data into one or more data tables in which data types may be related to each other; these relations help structure the data. SQL is a language programmers use to create, modify and extract data from the relational database, as well as control user access to the database. In addition to relational databases and SQL, an RDBMS like MySQL works with an operating system to implement a relational database in a computer's storage system, manages users, allows for network access and facilitates testing database integrity and creation of backups.

PostgreSQL Free and open-source relational database management system

PostgreSQL, also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the Ingres database developed at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, the project was renamed to PostgreSQL to reflect its support for SQL. After a review in 2007, the development team decided to keep the name PostgreSQL and the alias Postgres.

Wiki software Collaborative software that runs a wiki

A Wiki software is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application that runs on one or more web servers. The content, including previous revisions, is usually stored in either a file system or a database. Wikis are a type of web content management system, and the most commonly supported off-the-shelf software that web hosting facilities offer.

MediaWiki free and open-source wiki software, used by Wikipedia

MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It was developed for use on Wikipedia in 2002, and given the name "MediaWiki" in 2003. It remains in use on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites continue to define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki. MediaWiki was originally developed by Magnus Manske and improved by Lee Daniel Crocker. Its development has since then been coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation.

WebGUI Open-source content management system

WebGUI is an open-source content management system written in Perl and released under the GNU General Public License.

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of wiki software packages.

Mantis Bug Tracker

Mantis Bug Tracker is a free and open source, web-based bug tracking system. The most common use of MantisBT is to track software defects. However, MantisBT is often configured by users to serve as a more generic issue tracking system and project management tool.

XWiki Wiki engine

XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis on extensibility. XWiki is an enterprise wiki. It includes WYSIWYG editing, OpenDocument based document import/export, semantic annotations and tagging, and advanced permissions management.

Catalyst (software)

Catalyst is an open source web application framework written in Perl, that closely follows the model–view–controller (MVC) architecture, and supports a number of experimental web patterns. It is written using Moose, a modern object system for Perl. Its design is heavily inspired by such frameworks as Ruby on Rails, Maypole, and Spring.

Komodo Edit

Komodo Edit is a free and open source text editor for dynamic programming languages. It was introduced in January 2007 to complement ActiveState's commercial Komodo IDE. As of version 4.3, Komodo Edit is built atop the Open Komodo project. Komodo IDE is no longer supported and maintained by developers for python.

A personal wiki is wiki software that allows individual users to organize information on their desktop or mobile computing devices in a manner similar to community wikis, but without collaborative software or multiple users.

LedgerSMB

LedgerSMB is a free software double entry accounting and Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Accounting data is stored in a SQL database server and a standard web browser can be used as its user interface. The system uses the Perl programming language and a Perl database interface module for processing, and PostgreSQL for data storage. LedgerSMB is a client-server application, with server access through a web browser.

Silverstripe CMS

Silverstripe CMS is a free and open source content management system (CMS) and framework for creating and maintaining websites and web applications. It provides an out of the box web-based administration panel that enables users to make modifications to parts of the website, which includes a WYSIWYG website editor. The core of the software is Silverstripe Framework, a PHP Web application framework.

History of wikis History of wiki collaborative platforms

The history of wikis begins in 1994, when Ward Cunningham gave the name "WikiWikiWeb" to the knowledge base, which ran on his company's website at c2.com, and the wiki software that powered it. The "wiki went public" in March 1995—the date used in anniversary celebrations of the wiki's origins. c2.com is thus the first true wiki, or a website with pages and links that can be easily edited via the browser, with a reliable version history for each page. He chose "WikiWikiWeb" as the name based on his memories of the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" at Honolulu International Airport, and because "wiki" is the Hawaiian word for "quick".

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which may run either on the same computer or on another computer across a network. Microsoft markets at least a dozen different editions of Microsoft SQL Server, aimed at different audiences and for workloads ranging from small single-machine applications to large Internet-facing applications with many concurrent users.

Confluence is a web-based corporate wiki developed by Australian software company Atlassian. Atlassian wrote Confluence in the Java programming language and first published it in 2004. Confluence Standalone comes with a built-in Tomcat web server and hsql database, and also supports other databases.

ikiwiki

ikiwiki is a free and open-source wiki application, designed by Joey Hess. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. ikiwiki is written in Perl, although external plugins can be implemented in any language.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Perl programming language:

Foswiki

Foswiki is an enterprise wiki, typically used to run a collaboration platform, knowledge base or document management system. Users can create wiki applications using the Topic Markup Language (TML), and developers can extend its functionality with plugins.

References

  1. ↑ "Download TWiki". twiki.org. Retrieved 23 June 2019.
  2. ↑ "Everything You Need To Know To Get Started With Content Management Systems". InformationWeek . 10 September 2007. TWiki is a structured wiki, which is a combination of a traditional freeform wiki and a more structured database
  3. ↑ Matt Asay (29 October 2008). "TWiki's hunt for cash fractures its community". CNET.
  4. ↑ "TWiki Watch: TWiki Contributors".
  5. 1 2 "Development of Foswiki and TWiki - get the facts". wikiring.com. 17 November 2009. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016.
  6. ↑ R. Morin: TWiki and Foswiki: the road ahead
  7. ↑ "plugin packages". Twiki.org. Retrieved 24 June 2013.
  8. 1 2 "TWiki Forms". Twiki.org. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  9. ↑ SEARCH variable, formatted search, SQL-like query search
  10. ↑ "Sample TWiki applications". Twiki.org. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  11. ↑ TWiki Contributors. "User Interface Localisation". twiki.org. Retrieved 1 March 2008.
  12. ↑ Paper on corporate wiki users (slides)
  13. ↑ "The wiki as online conveyor belt" section in BusinessWeek article Make Some Noise - How web 2.0 tools can help you communicate with customers more effectively Archived 5 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ↑ "Estimated number of TWiki installations". Twiki.org. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  15. ↑ "What do TWiki users say?". Twiki.net. Archived from the original on 20 April 2009. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  16. ↑ "Case Study: Wikis give ARM Holdings a leg-up". The Wall Street Journal. Market Watch. 24 January 2007. Retrieved 6 October 2010.
  17. ↑ "TWiki success story of DHL Packstation". Twiki.org. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  18. ↑ Future of Melbourne City Plan
  19. ↑ "TWiki Scalability". Twiki.org. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  20. ↑ "FormattedSearch". Twiki.org. Retrieved 8 July 2009.
  21. ↑ "QuerySearch". Twiki.org. Retrieved 8 July 2009.
  22. ↑ "TWiki Copyright Disclaimer" . Retrieved 30 October 2008.
  23. ↑ "TWikiHistory page" . Retrieved 30 October 2008.
  24. ↑ Thoeny, Peter; Tom Barton (31 October 2008). "Relaunch TWiki.org Project". twiki.org. Retrieved 4 February 2009.
  25. ↑ "Why this fork?". Foswiki. 31 January 2009. Retrieved 4 February 2009.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.