Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

pcplantdb - [pcplantdb] Hierarchy

pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: pcplantdb

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>
  • To: PCPLANTDB <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [pcplantdb] Hierarchy
  • Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 19:50:51 +0000

Bear wrote

One person quipped during the presentation "so...when you've entered and cataloged all 200 million species...". To which I didn't respond quickly too. None-the-less, it brings up something about the structure of the database. It seems like objects should be able to "inherit" properties of their "children" (to put it in hierarchical terms) like in OO programming. Only the things that differ from the parent need be explicitly noted. A cultivar is the child of this species, has all its parents properties, BUT it's height is 2 meters and flower_color is red (seed pods are more palatable too). (We can also assume, since it inherits from plant, that needs include "CO2, water, nutrients, sun" and outputs include "O2, water"....duh..) This really means that you don't have to have every, single, individual plant or element cataloged to make the system useful. Like a fractal, the general network and forms will be visible, adding the additional items will make the system richer, and more useful when you're looking at those finer details and characteristics of cultivars, etc.

Part of my interest in RDF, OWL, etc is that it seems to be capable of describing a system like that.

Yes indeed nice description. There is some hierarchal structure maninly at the Species/Cultivar level. Although theres also some other similarities at higher level. Notably certian genus/families have a large number of species which all have the same hazards.

For example Almond (Prunus dulcis) has:

Known Hazards: Although no specific mention has been seen for this species, it belongs to a genus where most, if not all members of the genus produce hydrogen cyanide, a poison that gives almonds their characteristic flavour. This toxin is found mainly in the leaves and

(BUG This sentance seems to end early!)

All other members of the Genus have the same Hazard warning.

I could waffle on about other relationships at family/order/division
level but I'll spare you that.

We did cover this a while back. I think conclusion was KISS and keep things as they were, just having a page per species. But it is an interesting point to note.

A couple of minor formating bugs, there could be more space between Family and Species name in the listing of matching plants. http://permaculture.info/cgi-bin/eden?search=almond&button=Search+PIW
Also the underlining was one space out
Rosaceae Prunus dulcis Almond
-------- --------------
rather than
Rosaceae Prunus dulcis Almond
-------- -------------

Whats the issue tracker status?

Rich






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page