Re: Recursive Arrays 101

What was amazed me is the HUGE tables (as in too big to work with or
publish online) that, as near as I can remember, have rows like this...

panthera-leo (lion) | Panthera | Felidae | Carnivora | Mammalia | Chordata
| Animalia

cramming virtually the entire hierarchy into every single row. Some of my
tables have extra columns listing every species family and order, which
most people would consider sloppy. But that's tame compared to how they do
it.

I've never been able to make their downloads work on my Mac laptop, and the
PHP is too complex for me to figure out. Nor have they ever replied to my
e-mails. But the websites using their scheme include the Encyclopedia of
Life (EOL).

I'm focusing on creating a polished database focusing on vertebrates, along
with select invertebrates and plants. After I get that squared away, I'd
like to try adding the Catalogue of Life's entire database. The
Encyclopedia of Life and WIkipedia are both enormous projects, but there
are some amazing gaps in both projects that I hope to fill.

On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 8:51 PM, Adrian Klaver <adrian(dot)klaver(at)aklaver(dot)com>
wrote:

> On 10/25/2015 06:10 PM, David Blomstrom wrote:
>
>> @ Adrian Klaver: Oh, so you're suggesting I make separate tables for
>> kingdoms, classes and on down to species. I'll research foreign keys and
>> see what I can come up with. I hope I can make separate tables for
>> mammal species, bird species, fish species, etc. There are just so many
>> species - especially fish - the spreadsheets I use to organize them are
>> just about maxed out as it is.
>>
>
> If you go here:
>
>
> http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/browse/classification?71dd35ed0e10acf939d0123cdbf9ce57
>
> that is how you can drill down to a species in the CoL.
>
> It just seems to follow what is already there. No doubt, there are a lot
> of species. What is probably more important is that the relationships have
> changed over time and can be expected to change more, as genetic testing
> for the purpose of taxonomic classification becomes more prevalent.
>
>
>> I've been using the Catalogue of Life as a guide, but I'm limited
>> because I can never get their downloads to work. So all I can do is go
>> to their website and copy a bunch of genera and species at a time.
>>
>
> Well I downloaded the 2015 snapshot and it turns out it is MySQL specific.
> Recently upgraded this computer, will have to see if MySQL/Mariadb survived
> the process before I can go any further. It would be interesting to see how
> they tackled the relationships.
>
>
>
>> However, I did open up some of the tables I downloaded and was amazed at
>> how apparently amateurish they are. Yet their site works just fine and
>> is fast enough.
>>
>> @ Alban Hertroys: What does EOL mean? It reminds me of Encyclopedia of
>> Life, which is doing what I was attempting to do years ago.
>>
>>
>
> --
> Adrian Klaver
> adrian(dot)klaver(at)aklaver(dot)com
>

--
David Blomstrom
Writer & Web Designer (Mac, M$ & Linux)
www.geobop.org