I've had a quick play with the search form; here are some thoughts.
Firstly, it seems quite robust
I tried various combinations of characteristics and it always behaved cleanly - there were no pages with obscure SQL errors.
I suggest splitting the search characteristics into groups:
- nationality / ethnicity (Georgian, Armenian, byzantine etc.)
- role or rank (ruler, general, bishop etc.)
- religion
- pronouns / gender
This would make it more obvious why "Armenian" appears twice.
Also, it's not obvious why "Georgian Royalty" is a distinct characteristic - would this not be "Georgian" and "ruler"? Or should there be a general role of "royalty" that could be used for the members of royal families of any political/ethnic entity?
I tried searching with nothing ticked, and got no results back. I was more than half-expecting this, but I wondered whether it would give me all records instead of none. I presume there is no means of requesting all the records at the moment.
I tried searching with all the ethnicity characteristics ticked, and still got nothing. I was a bit more surprised by this - I thought it more likely that I would get all the records this way. I assume the underlying code is using AND to join each of the ticked characteristics for the search, even when they are in the same group. I suspect OR for joins
within a group, and AND for joins
between groups, is likely to be more intuitive.
