Checking in from the basement of CBC's Vancouver headquarters as we kick off an event which is bound to be quite remarkable - the CBC Digital Development Labs.

This morning was introductions by the entrepreneurial-minded attendees chosen to display and refine their ideas for possible development by CBC. I'm participating as a mentor (along with others) here to advise, gut-check, collaborate with (and learn from) the emerging visionaries.

Our secret lair (which is very cool by the way - set up with a variety of workspaces, conversation breakout areas, Mac labs, gamer stations - feels like jPod) is also loaded with industry types acting more as observers to see how projects come together in the new media paradigm.

Abstract

In this post, we describe some of the issues facing large or complex software projects using Drupal's CCK content type extension facilities. We then propose a remedy in the form of CoCKTaiL, a high-level language for CCK types and associated UI elements and relations. Tools and potential applications will be described in future work.

Introduction

Drupal's Content Construction Kit (CCK) is a powerful feature, much loved by Drupal developers, who use it to rapidly define data types and relations for applications. Using a UI, developers can easily create new content types by specifying fields, UI widgets, relations, and more.

The ability to interactively create new types and supporting UI's is a great timesaver in the early stages of many Drupal development projects.

For larger projects, however, the nature of the design and implementation process for CCK types leads to difficulties in evolving and maintaining projects which include CCK components, and these difficulties contribute to the lifecycle cost of large Drupal applications.