pcplantdb

[John Schinnerer <eco_living@yahoo.com>]

Aloha,

> I'd hope its a little more than that. I hope that we will be
> actively encouraging and facilitate the creation of plant datasets.
> I'd hate to see a fancy interface with nothing in it.

That's exactly what I'm saying - once a user-friendly engine is
available, non-techweenies can use it to create a whole cornucopia of
plant datasets without having to know a table from a chair ;-).

> Maybe I've a slightly different view. From a my SQL point of view
> a database just seems to be a collection of tables, queries, input 
> and output forms are not included. I suppose I'm conceptually
> thinking
> of collecting datasets (collections of tables) rather than databases.

This is where the separation of code (functionality), data and
presentation needs to be attended to.

I assume we're intending to create a 'database' in the *user* sense of
the word - which means the whole package of data (stored in tables or
whatever), code (functions for managing that data) and presentation
(the user interface, where the user invokes the code to manage the
data).

So think Permaculture - it's not the elements that are important, it's
the relatings between them.  A collection of tables full of data,
alone, is useless.  Functionality to manage data, alone, is useless.  A
nice, intuitive UI, alone, is useless.  Take all these and connect them
in appropriate ways and voila!...a useful database.
 
> For starters I guess we should stick with things on one server.
> Remote linking is a whole other can of worms.

What I'm suggesting is that we design for distributed databases from
the start.  We don't have to implement them right away, just make sure
that the hooks are there...if the engine assumes MySQL and sticks to
standard SQL stuff, remote queries shouldn't be a big deal. 
Perms/authentication will probably be the main issues.


=====
John Schinnerer, MA
--------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
Food - Shelter - Community
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net

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