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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] relationships implementation

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  • From: Bear Kaufmann <bear@ursine-design.com>
  • To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] relationships implementation
  • Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 20:04:25 -0800

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.
Trifolium repens -> interaction[symbiotic] -> Rhizobium leguminosarum
Trifolium repens -> common_name[English] -> White Dutch Clover
Trifolium repens -> interaction[symbiotic] -> Rhizobium trifolii (source: http://www.rsnz.org/publish/nzjar/2002/017.php)
Rhizobium -> fixes[atmospheric] -> nitrogen
Rhizobium -> habitat -> aerobic
Rhizobium -> morphology[shape] -> rod


Esh, what a tangled web of relationships...inference engine anyone?
Probably want to put Legume between the clover and the Rhizobium (many -> legume, legume -> rhizo) But man, googling for data, there's been so much research done on all these features. It's a shame there already isn't a machine readable (RDF?) abstract form for this data.

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.)
BTW, faceted searches seem like they'd work great for taxonomic identification...
Find a trait of the plant (that you understand or can observe), flower color = red...
OK, all the red flowers come up...
It's got a tree habit...
OK, getting close, only 30 matches...
Pea-shaped flower...
2 matches. Locust...(racking my own limited DB... :-P )

Rich, if you have time, would you mind taking a look at:
http://protege.stanford.edu/useit.html

Cheers,
Bear



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