permaculture

[christophe mckeon gonzalez de leon <chromatophore@gmail.com>]

hi,

> Drawing on every pattern and technique we can document with very high
> degree of confidence,
> we can synthesize that knowledge into a relational database of proven
> practices,

i would advise against a relational database at this point. permaculture
is replete with multi-disciplinary information, and is in constant flux. 
rdms's
have the "we know the entirety of the problem domain at the outset" mindset.
semantic triple stores do not have this limitation, there is no central schema
written in some separate DDL but a multiplicity of ontologies with connections
between them expressed in rdf triples just as the data itself is
expressed in rdf
triples. these 'schemas' are also dynamic and can be updated at
runtime, as well
as distributed in that it is easy to use multiple ontologies from
multiple sources
in a single application. so instead of reinventing the wheel for the
data model behind
a social network for instance, you just load up the foaf ontology over
the wire. if you
need to work with plant systematics you load up the relevant ontology
that some domain
experts have already done all the hard work writing. there are many
other very good
practical reasons why a pcdb should go with semantic web technologies,
and i'll be
posting about it to the pcdb list in the next few months.

> organized around the Holdridge Life Zones. 
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdridge_life_zones

thanks for this link, looks quite interesting, and so is your idea of
extending it to
urban areas. i'll have to read more about it.

> Anybody want to work on this with me?
> Maybe someone already working on Pc database design?

another great thing about ontologies is that they are more amenable to
collaborative
design than schemas and there are already some interesting tools for doing so.
one thing you and anybody else interested in your idea (me) can do is to work
collaboratively on an owl ontology, then later integrating it into any number 
of
applications becomes much easier than if you had started with a
relational schema
because you can capture much richer semantics in owl and abstract out
a great deal
of the logic normally expressed in application code.

http://protege.stanford.edu/
http://protegewiki.stanford.edu/index.php/Collaborative_Protege
http://protegewiki.stanford.edu/index.php/WebProtege

> Sounds like it would be a great resource, there is a guy here who is 
> redoing (with permission) the Plants for a future database,
> more ergonomic, and in French/English.

who's the guy doing redoing pfaf?

>  Could be we could link some of these projects together,

using ontologies, linking these projects is as easy as just writing a
new ontology
which incorporates them both, and establishes equivalences between the two.

can you tell i like ontologies?

_c