pcplantdb

[Stephanie Gerson <sgerson@stanfordalumni.org>]

Great to keep it focused on plants for now.  A more thorough response to 
come.
*s

------ Original Message ------
Received: 07:39 AM PST, 03/30/2005
From: Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>
To: pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [pcplantdb] relationships again

Ok, I think I have a proposal.

One of the big difficult questions for me re: relationships has been
how do we refer to elements that do not exist in the database yet, but
that we hope to have at some point.  My answer: we don't.  How about
at this point we only allow relationships between elements that exist;
in our case, plants.  This will limit the effectiveness, but it is
doable and could support GBI display.

A rough table implementation:

Object   |   Relationship   |   Object   |   Notes
---------------------------------------------------
Plant A      Wind break         Plant B      Withstands extreme 
oceanic...
Plant B      Trap crop          Plant A      Rabbits love Plant B
Plant C      Inhibits growth    Plant B      Secretes allelopathic 
hormone


A GBI display for Plant B would show a positive relationship path to
Plant A and a negative path tho Plant C.

I still don't really grok the relationship part of the equation, but I
think if we allow an 'open vocabulary' it might sort itself out.  I'm
also proposing that relationships be unowned and unmoderated (for
now).

Whadyathink?

-- 
Chad Knepp
python -c 'import base64;print 
base64.decodestring("cHlnQGdhbGF0ZWEub3Jn")'
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+++++++++++++++
Stephanie Gerson
sgerson@stanfordalumni.org
(c) 415.871.5683


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