compareware/README.md

# [CompareWare](https://compareware.org)

This application is still a prototype,
with only a landing page publicly available thus far.

## Use-Cases
- Authorised users can create `Items`: Working, no authorisations
- `Items` can have `Tags`: Implemented

### To Implement
- Authenticated `Users` can write `Reviews` referencing one or more `Items` and `Tag` them (for example with a URL linking to a more in-depth review)
- `Users` can trust (the reviews of) other users,
  creating a web of trust

## Database Design
`Tags` are Key-Value like in [OpenStreetMap](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tags) or Wikidata,
that is why they need own tables.
Initially I planned having a shared `Tags` table for both `Reviews` and `Items`,
but that would have been impractical because a Tag either belongs to a Review or an Item,
so two separate tables would have needed to been set up to track the referenced object,
with a risk of anomalies:
Technically there then could be no mapping in either table for a Tag, or two,
both of which are semantically incorrect -
because a Tag without reference is useless
and editing the Tag value for an `Item` should not affect a `Review` and vice versa.
Considering the simplicity of a Tag,
creating two separate tables prevents those cases without overhead
and normalizes the schema.

![CompareWare Overview Entity Relationship Diagram](compareware-erd.png)

For a fully normalized and implementable view,
every many-to-many relationship needs another table
which will be visible in a diagram generated from the [schema](./Application/Schema.sql).

## Developer Setup

```bash
direnv allow
devenv up
```

Open up http://localhost:8000 and you can create,
edit and delete items with key-value tags.