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  • From: Stephanie Gerson <sgerson@stanfordalumni.org>
  • To: <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [pcplantdb] synthesis[19][9.3.04]
  • Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 18:43:24 -0700

howdy folks,

Not much to synthesize at the moment. So little to synthesize, in fact,
that I don't even need HEADERS, just going to offer a few notes about ze
status of zings:

-Great discussions regarding plant attributes and object oriented model
have beein occurring in the past 2 weeks. Yay. This gets to the essence
of what we're trying to acheive.

-Chad's been working on the permaculture.info page and it looks
beautiful. Let him know if you want to add/change anything.

-We ought to clarify goals for phase 1 of the project. Johns wrote a
working doc, which I have cut and pasted below. Please read it, and
reply with any feedback - so we can finalize it and use it (although it
will be adaptable, of course). Clarifying these phase 1 goals would
actually be great for grant proposals.

-Speaking of which, I've researched some new funders and will be writing
letters of inquiry soon.

-Please make an account on bugzilla and create a bug, etc. as Johns
requested.

-Chad and Rich are still deciding on the platform issue. And we are
waiting patiently.

-If you want to check out your tasks, please check synthesis[18] - and
note that I made changes you sent to me, just left that doc at work.
Sorry.

Enjoy the long weekend...
*einahpetS

====

Johns wrote:
"We don't even have a basic spec of any kind.
No need for volumes of yadda-yadda, but some fundamental statements as
to what the phase one system will DO are IMO necessary.
For example:

Permaculture.info web application, phase one, will:

* enable authorized users to create plant entities within the
permaculture.info database
* enable authorized users to input plant data into such plant entities,
in various forms (string, text field, numeric, date, list, image, etc.)
* enable authorized users to edit plant entity data in various forms (as
above)
* enable registered users to add discrete information to (annotate...?)
a plant entity (narrative comments, additions/suggestions, etc.)
* enable anonymous users to search for (query the database on) plants or
plant-related information using a variety of search fields including but
not limited to:
- name(s) of plant(s)
- botanical characteristics of plants
- functional characteristics of plants
- location, climate, etc.
- etc. etc. (I am just giving example of high-level spec - more
details needed here)
* implement initial plant entity creation, input, editing, annotation
and searching using css- and xhtml-validated web forms/web pages
accessible by all browsers/internet devices.
* and so on...

The above example implicitly creates three user classes already -
authorized, registered and anonymous - so that's part of a spec as well
- user type definitions and privileges.

The above is also extremely high-level - a bit (but not too much) more
detail would be a very good idea, such as inserting an eventual plant
entity attribute list, details of search options/implementation,
how/what of registered user annotation, and so on.

IMO there is no clear idea common to us all as to what "phase one" will
actually DO.
This is likely to lead to more annoyance and wasted time/money when Chad
and Rich implement what they think it ought to do and the rest of the
group finds out it's not necessarily what they think it ought to do.

Annoyance if we don't take the time to sort at least the basics out
first, so people know what to expect to a certain extent.
Wasted time/money in hashing out phase one basic specs *after* some
amount of implementation has already been done and then has to be
redone."

Chad added:
"My personal desire is to also provide an intelligent search that
queries all of aspects of the database from a single text box."

and

"This is pretty much exactly what I had in mind to start doing with one
one addition and the questions where noted. The addition being adding
relationship elements and allowing authorized users to create and edit
relationships. The relationships would possibly be displayed in some
text/html way in a browser but would much more likely be used by our
GBI package (TouchGraph/FreeMind/whatever)."


+++++++++++++++
Stephanie Gerson
sgerson@stanfordalumni.org
(c) 415.871.5683


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