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Subject: 
Re: Online LEGO Inventory Database
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.db.brictionary
Date: 
Wed, 9 Feb 2000 16:42:03 GMT
Viewed: 
2745 times
  
In lugnet.db.brictionary, Steve Hodge wrote:

In lugnet.db.brictionary, Steve Bliss writes:
In lugnet.db.brictionary, Steve Hodge wrote:

One problem we have at the moment is that the various sources of parts lists
(LDraw, Tim Vattima's set inventories, Auczilla, Technica, etc) all contain
different subsets of the full parts list and use different descriptions. We
need to combine these sources and also work out how to deal with parts not on
any of those lists. Until that's done the inventories are difficult to • collate.

'The database' should allow multiple descriptions per piece.  And should have
the major descriptions pre-loaded.

Yep. The difficulty is in matching up the descriptions from the various sources
(e.g. which LDraw part is this Technica part?). Sometimes it's easy, somethimes
it's not.

Yep.

The core element table should have an abstract key value, and a pointer to a
graphic image for each part.  A second table, call it Descriptions, would have
the various descriptions for the part and the key back to the core element
table.

Yep.

Oh, and each description should probably be tagged with a source.  That way,
when we change the description of some part in LDraw, the cross-reference
database can be updated.

Some sort of searching (or at least heirarchical arrangement) of parts based
on attributes/description of the part would also be necessary (it's not
pleasant to have to wade through huge numbers of pictures looking for the • part
you want). There's another thread about just this.

Pictures are going to be the ultimate ID method for parts.  Having a small
number of categories or types would allow easier access to the pictures.  Once • a
number of descriptions are collected, a text search function is possible.

Look at <http://www.lugnet.com/cad/ldraw/parts/ref/> for ideas on organizing • and
searching.  Some stuff there works well, some doesn't.

That's the problem with just having categories of pictures. For some pieces
it's difficult to decide on which category it should be in.

Yep.  A better approach may be modeling a set of properties.  So a plate with
holes in it could have both the Technic and Plate properties.  This would avoid
requiring a hierarchical classification (is that redundant?) system.

This is probably better described by some fuzzy-logic concepts of which I know
little.

Steve



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Online LEGO Inventory Database
 
(...) have (...) I'd thought about this earlier, but forgot to mention it. (...) based (...) Once (...) avoid (...) Yeah, I agree. One of the other threads had come to the same conclusion and are curently trying to decide exactly which properties (...) (24 years ago, 10-Feb-00, to lugnet.db.brictionary)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Online LEGO Inventory Database
 
(...) collate. (...) Yep. The difficulty is in matching up the descriptions from the various sources (e.g. which LDraw part is this Technica part?). Sometimes it's easy, somethimes it's not. (...) Yep. (...) part (...) a (...) and (...) That's the (...) (24 years ago, 9-Feb-00, to lugnet.db.brictionary, lugnet.db.inv)

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