Talk:OS- and application-specific information

Structure of OS- and application-specific pages

I prefer the information about backup strategies for one application to be available from a single page. If one backup strategy needs a lot of text, it should have its own subpage. The main page of the application must link to these subpages.

I understand that information about backup strategies will need to be duplicated across multiple application pages, but in my opinion this makes setting up Amanda much faster because you can just go over your list of applications and look up their pages. You won't have to filter out information about other applications (e.g. when dump scripts for more databases have been added to Backup Databases Through Dumps), and you won't have to look at pages of different strategies to determine which one is the best for your situation.

Maybe MediaWiki templates can provide a single source for information about a strategy. This way improvements to texts of strategies will automatically appear on all pages of applications to which the strategies apply.

I see that the pages I added are not complete and more information can be added (e.g. how to restore when using dumps to back up). I would not want to duplicate the administration documentation of applications though. I assume an administrator is familiar with it, but links to those documents should be provided.

I think a good structure would be the following. I can find all the information I need about an application quickly. And it includes information which helps me decide which strategy to use:

• OS- and application-specific information
  • OS/Application
    • A section for each strategy with the following information:
      • When to use the strategy.
      • A short description of how it works.
      • Its advantages and disadvantages compared to other strategies (e.g. implementation ease, efficiency).
      • Steps to implement the strategy (possibly for different versions of the application), with links to the administration documentation of the application. If a lot of text is needed to explain the steps, a subpage must be created and linked to.

Jstuyts 10:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)