Google Docs as Database

Quiz Gadget is a quizzing gadget which has been developed using GCE (Gadget Control Editor), Google Pages and Google Docs. The Quiz Gadget uses Google Documents as the database. Many people would be wondering on the fact that the Quiz Gadget uses Google Document as database. Eventhough Google Pages does not provide server side scripting and database feature, one can combine the power of widgets and Google Document to get the same affect.

How do I create the database in Google Documents?- I create a spreadsheet in Google Spreadsheet with columns as my fields. Now fill in the data in the spreadsheet and now publish your spreadsheet as it makes the data available on net.  The link to the published spreadsheet now forms the connection string to the database for the widget.

How do I connect to the data in the spreadsheet?- One can easily  retrieve the HTML content of a webpage using the Remote Data Extracting Functions available in Google Widgets. Visit http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/remote-content.html for information and in depth understanding of such functions. The functions only requires the link to your published spreadsheet and fetches the HTML content as text to your widget.

How do you identify information from the HTML content?- One aquainted with HTML parsing should find extracting data from HTML content using HTML parsers an easy job. Though initially you may find the content to be unextractable but constant observation shall help you observe the patern and tags necessary to extract the info. Once you have the information playing with the information should be a easy job for techies and web page designers.

Limitations and constraints of such databases- One needs to heavily rely on Javascript for attaining the functionalities required for database support. Some users do not enable javascript on their browsers hence can be a severe limitation. As publishing of the spreadsheet is essential for database support, one cannot keep information privy from the users.

You might find handy the following link in better understanding of the blog – http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/dev_guide.html .

Link to Quiz Gadget – http://carte.blanche.leeway.googlepages.com/gkquizgadget

USE OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT (UCSD)

Cognitive science is most simply defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence. It is an interdisciplinary study drawing from relevant fields including psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, and biology. 

Researches are being conducted on how to implement Cognitive Science in the UI design of software. It has been established that the design of UI will affect the performance of human using the software. The colors used in the UI, positioning of the buttons, text boxes etc on the screen will affect the human behavior and interaction.The role of cognition and computation in the development of state-of-the art technologies such as human computational interaction in aviation, air traffic control, medical diagnosis, robotics and tele-robotics, and the design and engineering of cognitive artifacts are the major arenas of work under this program.  Improvement of the efficiency of the users like pilots, astronauts etc using software systems under pressure conditions and real time situations are also a part of such studies.

As HASE (Human Aspect in Software Engineering) covers the tracking of software failure to human factors of the developers, UCSD covers the psychological impact of UI on the users of the system.