Each of the courses I’ve created has one database, which I created for it.
However, one of the Finnish courses I co-maintain, that I did not create, has two databases, Finnish and Finnish2. Some words are in one database, some are in the other. I’ve been puzzled about this. Why is it this way?
I can see the drawbacks: When you search, you can only search one database at a time. If you want to find all the words that have a certain definition in common, you can’t always see them together on the same screen. And whatever you look for, you often have to search twice.
Are there any advantages to having two databases for a course?
Are there any good reasons you can think of why a course might have two databases?
Can the two be merged? Would it be a good idea to do so?
Interesting. I see some uses for different databases there. None of them apply to this course, though: Both databases are just Finnish vocabulary, with the same columns, tested in the same way with the same direction.
So is there a way to simply merge 2 database, that keeps the information of learning progress for all users?
(ie, something other that the “solution” to delete one of the database after having copied its content into the other one as new “words”?
This poor solution would force users to relearn from scratch the words of the deleted database).
@cos ~ this is probably not the insight you are looking for, but it addresses the first two questions you posed at the top of this post. “Are there any advantages to having two databases for a course ?” and “Are there any good reasons you can think of why a course might have two databases ?”
Yesterday, after a lot of frustration of trying to get some words into a new course I was creating with multiple levels that needed each level’s content to be in logical order (i.e. “Monday”, “Tuesday”, or “January”, “February”, etc.) they would not appear that way when I went into the course in Preview mode, even though I could clearly see them that way in both the database and each level in edit mode. I tried and tried and tried. But some levels would work out okay, others would be random. (Who wants to learn months for example as “March”, “July” October", etc. ?) The database I was using was one I created, it was not a wiki or a common one that others had used before.
So the solution was to create more than one database. I kept the first database for the levels that worked in logical mode. Then created a second database for the problem children. Since they were a smaller subset, I guess they were easier for Memrise to track, and they remained in logcial order.
The course now has more than one database, and both are testing is the same direction, and on the same columns. Had one worked the way it was supposed to (and used to before all the recent disruptions many of us have been experiencing with various database corruption issues) this type of workaround would not have been necessary.
So multiple databases, at least in this example, was an option, and it worked.
@cos ~ Like I said originally. I tried and tried many times, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t allowing for a logical order in the learning stage (even though every indication was visible that it should). Most of the entries in the course levels worked that way, but some didn’t. The second database did the trick. Users will never know there are two databases, and I didn’t care, as long as the logical ordering worked. The course is complete and I am on to other things now. I only mentioned this in the forum because you put a post out earlier wondering why there might be a need for more than one database in a course. This was clearly a candidate in my case.
I use two databases in all of my Japanese vocabulary courses. They’re mostly mirrored copies of each other, but I use them for different testing directions, because I don’t want the alternate answers to always be the same.
For example, I have 国王 (king) in one of my courses. I want 王様 and its kana (おうさま) to also be accepted when prompted with the English definition, as it also means ‘king’. I do not, however, want おうさま to be accepted when testing on the reading for 国王, as it would be incorrect.
I think it’s also a good approach for a course that covers different topics. If, say, I were making a course that covered vocabulary in one set of levels, grammar in another, and example sentences in another, I would likely opt to use different databases for each set, in order to keep things tidy.
I use several databases. Have done than from the beginning. It gives you much more freedom. In one you can ask only strictly written words for example. If one word has multiple meanings they go to different database. I like when databases are arranged by themes. A hole lot easier to find things
I find that really puzzling. Why would you put those in different databases? That prevents you from seeing that you have two of the same word in the course, in one search. If they’re in the same database you can easily see that they have separate meanings, since they’ll have the same value in the first column but different values in the next column, so what’s the advantage of putting those two in two separate databases?
@cos
Then they don’t come up at the same time on multiple choice tests. And items are easier to find also. I use a lot of half empty entries also to make multiple choice tests not so easy
Ahah! That is one answer to my question that I don’t think came up on this thread before: You can use multiple databases for the same categories of information, as a way to separate which answers memrise picks from in multiple choice reviews. That is a useful trick.