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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] Job One

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  • From: Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>
  • To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] Job One
  • Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 06:11:07 -0600

Bear K writes:
> > Agree with Lawrence and Rich.
> > We've already been around this discussion way back - got to have a
> > back end (DB and 'data engine') before we can have a front end; dev
> > and test of back end requires a simple/straightforward front end to
> > support it (and also be initial/generic/low bandwidth front end,
> > especially for all that *input* we are hoping to get from somewhere
> > out there).
>
> Fully agree. I believe I mentioned that I wanted to see the back-end
> discussion restarted. I've mentioned a few DB related ideas without
> much response.

Partly due to actually having to learn something about RDF in order to
respond intelligently ;-)

> Looking at RDF is looking very exciting, especially with this
> http://139.91.183.30:9090/RDF/
> See http://139.91.183.30:9090/RDF/RQL/Manual.html to see what it can
> do. See Figure 1 on that page.
> Flexible, extensible, RDBMS backend, RDF/XML interchange, OO concepts.
> Then we could work on actually developing a schema.
> Chad, do you think this is something that could work? It needs a C++
> compiler, Postgres DB. Do you have SSH access on the ibiblio account?
> It seems like something which could make expansion of the project easy,
> as it seems the library handles the table creation in the RDBMS, etc.
> We could start developing the relationships, classes, etc. Start with
> the PFAF db, then easily connect more relationships to the plants
> (microorganisms, etc). This system would also seem to allow things
> like: Assigning information to plant Families, Genus, etc with
> information about the group as a whole (botanical differences, etc).
> The vocabulary Chad set up could be set up, with each value having a
> long(er) English description, then perhaps translatable to other
> languages. These would be accessed through RQL, and wouldn't require
> updating hardcoded information. This would also seem to allow easy
> addition of comments, and authorship info.

RDF does look quite interesting and a discussion you missed out on
early on was a desire to make our information accessible to other
systems. We supposed would probably be something XML. RDF may be the
XML technology for this.

As exciting as RDF may be, I'm pretty hesitant to switch chosen
platforms both because of shyness to try out recent technologies early
on and feeling a need to focus on getting promised features into PIW
not learning new stuff (as much as I love that).

Moving to RDF could be a feature of future funding proposal...

Cheers,
Chad

P.S. I see that Rich M. just wrote more or less what I was going to
say...

--
Chad Knepp
python -c 'import base64;print base64.decodestring("cHlnQGdhbGF0ZWEub3Jn")'




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