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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] relationships implementation

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  • From: John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>
  • To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] relationships implementation
  • Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:06:25 +0000

Aloha,

o What's the difference between a quality/attribute and a
relationship? For example is nitrogen fixing a relationship or an
attribute? What about alleopathic (sp?) properties?

I'd say nitrogen fixing is an attribute, but
habitat types, plant uses are relationships.

Then again, from the perspective of those little N-fixing bacteria, it might look more like a habitat type, or a plant use...

N-fixing at least for some legumes depends on the presence of the appropriately 'related' (ahem... ;-) bacteria in the soil - and vice versa...if a plant that has the *potential* to relate with/support/provide habitat for n-fixing bacteria is put where they aren't present, it won't have that 'attribute'...so I'd say it's not an attribute.

Attributes would *only* be things that have no significant interdependency on something external to the plant - an intrinsic property of the plant.
So most of the taxonomic stuff, if I understand it right, would be attributes (e.g. the descriptive taxonomies used to classify plants - 'clusters of three leaves', 'five-petaled orange flower', 'three evenly spaced branchings per stem', etc. etc.)
If the info depends on some relationship(s) then it's a relationship...!

As for your more general question, I still think of this as a DB I would go to for finding plants based on a variety of permaculture-centric information - functions and relations and attributes in the PC sense.

Not that I need to do human-English searches - just some narrative examples of what I mean:

"I need a tree that provides fodder for goats, is happy in zone 'X', provides medium shade from a high leaf canopy, tolerates wet feet, and typically maxes out at 40-50 ft. high."

"I need a slow-growing bush that provides food and shelter for XYZ types of birds, nectar for bees, can be maintained as a hedge-row and tolerates drought."

"I need a nitrogen-fixing, low-growing ground cover that tolerates full sun to medium shade, survives occasional foot traffic and does not negatively affect/does not compete with the growth of flowers A or B."

....and so on.

I don't have a clear articulation at the moment, but the one to one relationships thing seems off somehow...how would you answer questions like above based on just 1-1 relations stored in the DB? Would that be an easy search to code, or a difficult/expensive one?

John S.

--

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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