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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] attributes

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  • From: John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>
  • To: pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] attributes
  • Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 22:00:47 +0000

Aloha,

If we're eventually going to be using this database to identify
potential guilds, then the more information stored about each plant
the better. And when I say "guild" I use the term very loosely.
What I really mean is the ability to use this database to find
a group of plants (or things) that don't have conflicting demands
and in which each element supplies some of the needs of other
elements in the group.

Exactly - well put.

Finding groups of things (including plants, animals, insects,
structures and even processes) which work together in this way
is a fundamental aspect of permaculture, so any information we
can store which helps in this task would be useful.

Absolutely.

It would not be desirable

Or practical or possible...

to require that every such potential
relationship be explicitly defined in the "relationships" table in
order that this relationship be used to identify a guild.

Instead the attributes of the objects (i.e. nitrogen fixing vs
nitrogen consuming) can be used to identify this relationship.

Yes.

So it follows that I think it would be best to expand the list of
attributes stored about each object so that these relationships can
be determined procedurally from the data set.

Exactly.

Perhaps storing a description of relationships between specific
objects would be a useful thing in that it allows the entire data
set to be scanned to find other similar relationships which occur
between other objects.

There may be some particular cases where we would want to store specific relationships, yes. For a few examples if nothing else.

But at the end of the day I think the end user will need to be able
to define how they want to analyse the data to find relationships.
And then it's going to be the quality and breadth of information
stored about each object that will really make this database useful.

Yes, exactly, absolutely!

That's why the object model fits so well.

When a plant object "knows" about itself (by having relevant attributes with appropriate values), we ask it what we want to know about it and it tells us.

Then I can ask all thousands and thousands of plant objects eventually in the system questions based on what I need to know, like:

"Who among you is a shade-loving nitrogen-fixing bird-habitat-providing coppiceable woody shrub that is hardy to -10F?"

...and have some of them jump up and wave their woody shrubby object selves at me and say "I am, I am...!!"

Who's coding the animation for that, by the way? ;-)



--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Whole Systems Design Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net




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