Determine best data entry method

[wkdewey]

I am considering systems such as Airtable, Baserow, Django, Neo4J, Ruby on Rails (in its standard ActiveRecord setup), and Solr with Blacklight.

Could be used just for data entry to be ingested into Elasticsearch, as a backend to the website, or even as a full stack application.

[wkdewey]

Methods that could be implemented for the pilot project

• [ ] SOLR and Blacklight: I think this would work well with a standard Ruby on Rails setup and doesn't entail too much technical complexity. I could then do data entry with forms from the Rails applications (as I was trying to implement)
• [x] Baserow: This is the simplest option. I tested it out and confirmed that it can support my data model. This would work in conjunction with my existing app, and I would have to write scripts to pull the data from baserow (or else from the downloaded CSVs)

[wkdewey]

Methods that could be used later, when the project is expanded

• [ ] Neo4j: I find the data model quite promising, it fits the kind of data I am using. However, integrating it into a full-scale application seems daunting. It does not fit directly into Ruby on Rails or Django. Python plugins do exist and I saw an example of web applications with Flask. The network analysis capabilities are the best feature of Neo4j and I could use the database just for that purpose.
• [ ] Django: This is a more modern system than Rails and could integrate with another data entry model like Baserow, or have an admin site to enter data. It also seems compasrable to Ruby on Rails. Creating a full stack app in an unfamiliar syste, from scratch seems rather involved.

[wkdewey]

We are going to use Baserow for the current push, other decisions will wait if/when we use other systems.