The faqs table

T
he flattened information is stored in the table faqs. The structure is as follows: 

| Field       | Type         | 
+-------------+--------------+
| doc_node_id | int(11)      |
| path_desc   | varchar(255) |
| keywords    | text         | 
| long_num    | int(11)      |
| short_num   | int(11)      |
| desc_text   | text         |
| private     | int(11)      |

The doc_node_id field is the primary key which is there for purely technical reasons. The path_desc field contains the full path name of the node. The keywords field contains the keywords for this node. This is to facilitate searching. The desc_text field contains a small description about the contents of the node. The private field indicates whether this node should be available for public viewing or for techstaff viewing only. The actual data of the node is stored in two static strings, whose id's are short_num and long_num respectively. Except for the path_desc, all other information is optional.

The exact use the short_num and the long_num fields are put to may vary. In our example of software listing, the static string keyed under short_num may contain a short description of the data (more detail then desc_text), and long_num contains the full description. If we are using this to represent a FAQ, then short_num's static string could represent the question the FAQ is answering and long_num the answer to the question. The contents of the table to represent the software listing shown above is: 

(path_desc),                  (desc_text)
/linux,                       Linux
/windows,                     Windows
/vmware,                      VMWare
/dos,                         DOS
/freebsd,                     FreeBSD
/linux/adm,                   Administrative
/linux/web,                   Web
/linux/email,                 Email
/linux/publish,               Publishing
/linux/publish/latex,         LaTeX
/linux/web/mozilla,           Mozzilla
........