Edit This Structure = Creating the System Itself

Since computer users are used to (and today trained to) draw/write/create tables when they have the tasks to drop some more or less structured data, this is where we can start from.

Image a webpage with structure content, like a table. Click "Edit This Page" and you are able to: change the content of the table, add a row, add a column, change the caption of a column, change the background color of a cell, group cells, indicate that the cells of a certain column should have only certain values to select from, add links so link point to another page accordingly to the content of the row. Etc.

With this, we have structured knowledge in the system. While a typical spread sheet programme leaves it like it is, a Holistic Programming System picks up the data and creates knowledge structures from it. And, more important, offers the user already existing knowledge to choose from when creating a new table.

Need a table of project managers? Create a table of projects and select from the employees list the project manager.

Need a table of projects showing the start and end point and the status? Create a table and use the projects from the table created before (maybe by somebody else), and add the information you need.

Need a table of project already finished? Create a table that is a query on the projects from before filtered by a date clause. Etc.

Employees, Projects - entities

Project Manager - an employee assigned to the project with the role "manager"

Begin Date, End Date - attributes of an project.

By capturing the structured data and actually "understand" it, an object model is created that represents the knowledge and can be used for further development of our software.

Since it is created automatically driven from user input, and can be modified automatically.

Since the code running the solution system with all these tables is generated, change doesn't matter. It just needs a regeneration.

Got the idea?