具資料可擴充性的官職表模型與實作

Abstract

在中國歷史上，官員的任職資訊是研究的重要參考資料。傳統的做法是將相關的資料編排出版成書，但書籍的編排方式一定按照某種規律（如時間），如果使用者要查考其他的資訊（如某人做過什麼官），則需要翻查全書才能找全。在前人的研究中，針對「台灣地理及歷史卷九官師志第一冊文職表」開發出一個具有三種查詢功能的「清代台灣文官官職表」系統 （http://140.112.30.230/Career_tb/），將該書所蘊含的官職資訊做結構化的呈現，使得使用的便利性顯著提升。但是當初設計時並沒有考慮到擴充的需求，後端資料的存放不具彈性，在沒有一個後端管理平台的狀況下，增添資料十分困難。 本論文在以「清代台灣文官官職表」系統現有功能為基礎的前提下，設計一個有彈性的資料模型來存放書中資訊，這個模型要解決後端的資料與前端的呈現的互動關係，使得後端資料的修改可以自動反應在前端的呈現上。此外資料結構的欄位亦須有足夠的彈性，使得彼此能夠連結，以滿足各種不同的查詢需求。 為了驗證我們方法的可行性，我們除了將「清代台灣文官官職表」系統中的資料重新做了一個查詢及展示系統外，可用不同的維度（時間、官名、人物）做不同結合的呈現外，也為中研院近史所所編「清季職官表」做了一個雛形系統，展示類似的功能。

Personnel information of officials has been an extremely useful source for research in Chinese history. The conventional way is to compile such information into a reference book. The linear organization of a book, however, makes it difficult to fully utilize the information. For instance, if the book is arranged chronologically, then it is hard to find all the positions that an official had assumed in his life time. In a previous study, a query system for the book “Taiwan Officials during Qing Dynasty”, was developed (http://140.112.30.230/Career_tb/). This system fully integrated the content of that book and provided search for year, office title, and person name. However, the system was built by “hardwiring” the content, leaving little room for extension. In this thesis we present a design with a flexible data model. On the functionality level, the front end search facility of the new system does not go beyond the previous one. However, the content of the book is engineered with a more flexible data model to allow easy extension and modification of the data. The separation of the data model and the front-end presentation also makes it easier to apply our approach to other reference books of a similar nature. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, we completely rebuilt the “Taiwan official search engine” mentioned above. We have also built a prototype for the book List of Officials of Qing Dynasty (清季職官表) edited by the Institute of Modern History of the Academia Sinica.