Proposal to Extend & Create Apps
Paul Cote
I've been working on a data model for a small 15 acre garden/campus named Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C. USA. I started the project 3 years ago when the APGG was in much more complicated than it is now. We had several CAD files that needed to be integrated. We decided to take a very simple data modeling approach, with the intention od converging with the APGG at some point. Last year we made a simple trees model that allows us to emulate what our garden managet had been doing in pencil as a relational database model that has 5 tables. Our schema keeps track of various Garden Objects (e.g. Trees, Beds...), ObjectObservations, ObjectMaintainace operations, Photos and Documents. One of the things I like about this model is ists simplicity. Yet, I am excited to see the new progress and the gathering momentum surrounding the APGG and I feel it would be really great to converge and collaborate with all of you.
One of the things I want to do next is create a simple interface for browsing, editing and linking objects, observations, maintenance and documents. This would permit the gardeners to browse, add, update and link elements of the schema without having to deal with tables and relates and stuff. I'm thinkiing of doing this either as a desktop Java App, or using ArcEngine/ArcObjects.
Questions for the APGG Community:
1. Converging the dumbarton Oaks model capabilities with the APGG data model would require several extensions to the APGG data model: a couple of new tables and several new attributes and some new relationships. What do you all think about these?
2. Is anyone else thinkiing of creating a similar set of Picker/ Browser/Editor/Linker tools? Any suggestions for us?
You can read more about our model here: www.gsd.harvard.edu/gis/manual/arboretum
Brian Morgan
As we have discussed, we would love to merge our models together. What additional capabilities would you suggest that we add to our model? We are currently focusing our efforts on designing a web based application for working with our data, and I think that the browser/editor functionality you described would be a great addition to it and could avoid the difficulties of working on the ArcObjects level of development. I would love to talk more with you about this at some point...
Brian