I drafted this post as a reply to @parezcoydigo’s excellent post of how (s)he uses DTPO in academia, but since my thoughts were more generic than academic specific, I thought it best to start a new topic. Like @parezcoydigo, I am finding that having multiple databases open and the ability to create RSS feeds has really changed the way I use DTPO and interact with my data. Originally I thought that the addition of tags would be the killer feature that would allow me to flatten out my (then 2) databases.
While I am still looking forward to full tag support in 2.0, over time I have been splitting databases out, and splitting a couple again, to get a much more lean and functional system. The AI functions appear to work much better when the database content is limited to contextual data rather than one big bucket for everything. Also, the structure is much flatter so I don’t have to drill down into several layers of groups to find what I am looking for. Still, I can search, duplicate, replicate, and move data across databases with ease.
Why am I just ‘discovering’ this usage scenario with 2.0 when I have been using it for 9 months now? I believe it is because I have used DTP for so many years now that I was accustomed to using one database at a time, and I really did not allow myself to think outside the box about using DTP in a new way. For those of you might be in a similar situation, or are coming to DTP from competing products that only allow a single database open at one time, I would encourage you to explore the possibilities with multiple databases in DTP.
I’ve also become increasingly impressed with the inclusion of RSS feeds in the database. At first I thought that this feature was redundant as I was already capturing pages from NetNewsWire into DTPO. As a little background, I was using news feeds similar to a newspaper. I subscribe to many feeds in NetNewsWire, and I get 150-200 new articles each morning that I would skim over, and I found myself ignoring most of the articles in the process.
I started adding a few feeds that are very specific to my interests into DTPO, mostly as a means to beta test this functionality. In doing this, I found that I was much more inclined to fully read, explore, and make use of the articles that were directly captured to DTPO. I’ve added a few more feeds now, but I have limited the number to just the feeds that are directly applicable to my interests and research. I still use NetNewsWire as my ‘morning paper’ for the general-interest topics that I would seldom, if ever, capture into DTPO anyway. If you have not yet tried adding RSS feeds to DTP, try adding a few and see how it works for you.
There is a lot more to like in DTP 2, and still more to come with the full support of tags, but I am finding that that having multiple databases open and RSS support to be well worth the wait and cost of upgrading from 1.5x. My thanks to the entire group at DEVONtechnologies!
