pcplantdb

[Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>]

Bear Kaufmann writes:
 > 
 > On Tuesday, August 2, 2005, at 12:39  PM, Chad Knepp wrote:
 > 
 > > Bear Kaufmann writes:
 > >> Hi all,
 > >>
 > >> Congrats on the letter from Encarta to PFAF. It'd definitely increase
 > >> visibility to a lot of users (and draw eyes from folk looking for the
 > >> name of cabbage).
 > >>
 > >> Last night I searched around, and played with some graphing engines,
 > >> and producing dynamic XML from the database on the fly.
 > >> Here, I'm finding all the uses used by a plant Family, then graphing 
 > >> it
 > >> out. You can start to see the connections/relatedness in terms of use.
 > >>
 > >> Check out:
 > >> http://www.permaculture.info/test/graph/perfuse_dev.php
 > >>
 > >> Proof of concept. Best proof? Hardly, but a start.
 > >
 > > Very nice, Richard did a demo app like this earlier.  I'm curious as
 > > to how it connects to the info.  Static file?  I think xml-rpc will be
 > > pretty handy for connecting the data to a GBI part.
 > 
 > Since I was having trouble connecting to the DB on ibiblio, yes, 3 
 > static files.
 > On localhost, you can enter any family into the url (family=), and get 
 > dynamic results.

I would avoid connecting directly to the database on ibiblio esp. if
the connection is a plain text one (ssh tunnel would be ok).  My
concern is in keeping the connection info private and secret.  If this
info is compromised our data could be damaged or destroyed.  Also
don't email it around, ftp it, etc...  

For a long term solution lets work toward using the xml-rpc interface
to the server to get data from the database.  This means we need the
source code to whatever GBI thingy we use in order to point it in the
right direction.  I can help get it working if you'd like.

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