Hi All,

My time and efforts to date have pretty much been focused on the tomato database but I have occasionally strayed and explored other sections.

This morning I went to suggest some information about a beet, and noticed that there was no "history" field like there is for the tomatoes. I was specifically looking at 'Burpee's Golden' beet.

In the tomato database, we use the field to describe the origin of the variety if it is known. This includes who bred it, introduced it, the year introduced, etc. I think that this would be a useful field to have available for all vegetable types, and even for ornamental.

Mike

As you've noticed, these fields do exist in some of the plant types but not across them all.

I have no problem with making some of these fields be universal to all plants. We just need a consensus on what fields we want.

I don't know if it is applicable to shrubs, trees, and other ornamental plants . . . folks working on those databases need to chime in, but they are of use for documenting crops (veggies, grains, etc.).

I've given some thought on this. I think we should make a new group of text fields that are visible on all plants in the database:

Hybridizer
Introducer
Year Introduced
History

All would be text fields.

Then once these are created, I will write a script to migrate this data from the corresponding fields in the custom databases that already have it so it's all in one place.

Any opposed to this proposal?

I'm not opposed to the addition of these fields, but I do question the need to migrate the data from the fields in the custom databases. They're all set up in different ways. Some include the country of origin. Others have special wording ("Discovered by ...") for sports. I'm sure there are other items of this information that are specific to the particular type of plant. I personally appreciate the custom databases and I think excessive uniformity in data entry methods could rob them of their special character. I'm not feeling well this week, so I can't order my thoughts properly and state my objections as well as I'd like, but this bothers me.

I understand what you're saying zuzu and I agree what you're saying about the special character of each custom database.

I wish there was a way to have both, where the box only appears for a plant if a similar one isn't already present for the plant if it's a member of a custom database. I'll have to give it more thought.

I agree with zuzu in not liking the idea of migrating those fields from the custom sections of the database to the general sections. For example, the Iris Database is set up to, as much as possible, mirror the way information is displayed in AIS's register. If the Hybridizer and Year Introduced fields get moved, it's going to look a bit strange.

Okay, very good. I appreciate very much both of your feedback. We'll find a way to do this that works for the main database while not messing with the custom databases.

(Back to contemplation mode. )