Plants, lots of plants, lots of fields
November 29, 2017 12:17 PM Subscribe
I need a plant selection database for my business. I'm not a programmer and have no time to set this up - am willing to move this to mefi jobs.
I'd like to enter one or more plant attributes e.g. pH tolerance; blue flowers; 2metres tall etc and have a list returned - this would be a great first step and a huge leap beyond ploughing through manuals and lists. To get to this point may be enough for now but I'd like any solution to handle more functionality down the track.
I currently have a Excel sheet with many of my plants and about 50 fields. However I normally only use the same ten or 12 core fields. The other fields are for added functionality.
I also design planting schemes which are matched with one or more herbicides and want to be able to access this data via the database solution. I have the data for this and also have a partially populated field in my excel sheet. Herbicides are (generally) classed in discrete 'families' which in turn act or specific plant families - there are exceptions but not frequent and I imagine would be handles by a notes field.
Most of my species names would come from an image file collection (mostly jpgs).
I'll write more as my hoped for feedback and questions come in. I've been dithering about asking this so just have to get it out there.
I'll have a look at in the evenings (NZ time).
I'd like to enter one or more plant attributes e.g. pH tolerance; blue flowers; 2metres tall etc and have a list returned - this would be a great first step and a huge leap beyond ploughing through manuals and lists. To get to this point may be enough for now but I'd like any solution to handle more functionality down the track.
I currently have a Excel sheet with many of my plants and about 50 fields. However I normally only use the same ten or 12 core fields. The other fields are for added functionality.
I also design planting schemes which are matched with one or more herbicides and want to be able to access this data via the database solution. I have the data for this and also have a partially populated field in my excel sheet. Herbicides are (generally) classed in discrete 'families' which in turn act or specific plant families - there are exceptions but not frequent and I imagine would be handles by a notes field.
Most of my species names would come from an image file collection (mostly jpgs).
I'll write more as my hoped for feedback and questions come in. I've been dithering about asking this so just have to get it out there.
I'll have a look at in the evenings (NZ time).
AirTable could be the solution you need. AirTable is a cloud-based relational database application with a UI that is very much like a spreadsheet. There are a lot of Mefite AirTable users who might respond to a Jobs posting for this task.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:02 PM on November 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:02 PM on November 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
As someone who manages a large documented collection of plants, BG-Base and Iris-BG are very useful for managing the type of data you're referring to. These programs have the ability to organize large amounts of plant-related information with report output features. The intent behind them is to create records of individual plants instead of selecting plants based on certain attributes, however you might get some ideas about how you want to structure your own custom database to suit your needs. Good luck!
posted by strelitzia at 8:08 AM on November 30, 2017
posted by strelitzia at 8:08 AM on November 30, 2017
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What's your timeline?
Is this just for you or a group of people?
posted by slipthought at 12:52 PM on November 29, 2017