pcplantdb

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

Chad Knepp wrote:
> Lawrence F. London, Jr. writes:
>  > If it is done on ibiblio I can be counted on to help out in a
>  > variety of ways for the long haul.  I plan to focus more of my
>  > attention on HG than on any other web projects I work on, now or
>  > later.
>
> I have a high degree of confidence that ibiblio will be able to
> provide what we need regarding a zope platform, even if it isn't right
> away.  We also have the expertise between us to do it ourselves or
> help them do it for us.  Zope really is common/popular enough to be
> available almost everywhere.  I am a little surprised that they don't
> have an install there already, but it's no big deal.  Anyway, I don't
> think that the fact that ibiblio doesn't already have Zope should be a
> big factor in deciding whether to go the Zope route or the Eden/MySQL
> route.
I am very strongly in favor of a system eventually on ibiblio,
for a number of reasons.
1) There are some great datasets already there namely
        permaculture mailing list
        pc wiki
        lots more lawrence has tucked away there
2) Connections with the wider community
        For this to work were are going to need more datasets
        from other permaculture praticioners. Theres a phrase
        over here "its not what you know its who you know"
        and the chap with the greatest connections in our group
        is Lawerence.
3) No long term maintanace at the sysadmin level. No long term
        server costs, high bandwidth, and a host which will
        be there for a very long time to come. Suportive sysadmins.

I'm fairly agnostic as to zope, I'm happy to go with it,
but there are many other systems which could do it as well.
For instance perl has objects good DB connectivity and
a vast library.

I've also developed a proof of concept database system on ibiblio
at
        http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/pcplantdb/index.php
it look terible and does not have google type search but it does
illustrate many of the features we need:
        Allows additions of information to db
        Extensible, very easy to add a new field.
        Handles other objects as well as plants.
        Beginings of support for users with varying
        levels of permision.
        Allows a strong atribution model. Footnotes are used
        to indicate who wrote what. Contributions can be woven into the       
  
        different sections in the main text.
        XML output.
	Fairly well documented code and table structure. Uses a javadoc 		type 
system to make the tables self documenting.

The question which has been coming up in my mind reciently is what are 
the objects? What are the initial thoughts as to what objects
are used to represent the data.

We could have:
        users - holds data about a user
        things - data about a thing (plant, guild, keylines, ...)
           plants - sub class of thing plant specific info
        section - a specific section of information about a thing
        keyword - a key word about the plant or thing
        relationships - a link between two things
	contribution - an individual contribution by an particular user about a 
thing.
        resource - some other resources like photos, videos mp3's.

I think we need to have a clear idea about the object/data structure so 
that we can ensure that the platform we choose can suport our needs.

Do we need
        sub-classing of objects?
        encapsulation - tying methods and data together?
        extensible objects?

I'm not 100% convinced that objects are essential.
A RDBM scheme can handle most of our needs.
Its fairly straightforward to go from an database record to an object.

        Laters

                Rich

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