pcplantdb

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> The programing isn't the hard part.  The hard part is understanding
> and documenting those relationships.  The programing part of Eden and
> PFAF is nothing compared to the data assimilated by Ken Fern.

Ditto, more or less - though designing what to program, in terms of the more
complex proposals heard here, will not be trivial IMO.

I missed something re the Ken Fern reference...please enlighten me about 
him...?

Also, to Stephanie's question, the short answer is yes.  To hopefully clarify
in mostly plain English the way this might be put together:

You can cerainly have the graph-based front end (if someone steps forward to
develop it), and others as well, but there has to be something behind them.

The 'back end' is the database itself and the ways and means to access it at
the programming level.  It does *not* include any particular 'user-friendly'
or 'end-user' interface of any kind.  It does include some (hopefully)
programmer-friendly ways and means to get information out and put information
in.  In geek-speak, these ways and means are usually called an application
programming interface (API).  So a back end typically consists of the actual
database itself and an API that 'front end' programmers can use to talk with
that database.

The 'front end' is what the user sees when they go to some web site that
provides access to the back end.  Programmers create a 'front end' using some
typically visually oriented model (windows, forms, icons, buttons, mouse
point-and-click, graphical representations and so on) to help an end user do
what they want with the back end - such as ask for and receive information.

Good software design means that the back end does not assume or enforce a
particular front end. A front end developer looks at the ways and means
provided by the API for the back end and uses them to essentially translate
between the end users' actions, made via some graphical user interface, and
the database itself.

One person or group could write a typical sort of web-form-based user
interface front end for searching the database.  Another could write the
dynamic-graph sort of user interface that you favor for searching the
database.

One back end - many possible front ends.  Front ends need back end, including
well-formed and reasonably stable API, to be built at all.

Hope this helps to explain why IMO discussing front ends without having a back
end well under way is not a good use of our bandwidth.

> Because, wonderful news, we were accepted into the final round of
> the grant process with the Threshold Foundation.  But it seems we
> are re- questioning the proposed project - are people still
> comitted to pursuing this?  And if so, are there any changes we
> would make to the initially proposed project?

That's cool.
What do you consider to be the initially proposed project?
If there's money to pay me I am more available than if not (because if not I
have to be doing something else with my time for livelihood).
I would be able to start setting up a test/QA infrastructure, process and bug
DB (bugzilla or similar open-source issue tracking system).

Has someone already stepped forward to handle and host source control if/when
some design and coding starts in earnest?

cheers,
John S.




John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Design & Technology Services
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john@eco-living.net
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