--- Peter Brawley <peter.brawley@stripped> wrote:
"As you note, the names [of animal taxons] aren't
guaranteed to be unique, or to stay the same . . .
> One way out is to give every table an
> auto-incrementing integer PK, and
> use those keys, which will never change, to mark
> parent-child relationships.
I wanted to follow up on this. I can easily substitute
integers from my primary key for names, but how do I
substitute them for parents? For example:
ID | NAME | PARENT
10 | Canidae | Carnivora
11 | Canis | Canidae
12 | Vulpes |Canidae
I can easily replace Canis with 11, Vulpes with 12.
But they both have the same family - Canidae, which
translates as 10. I could create a new field and
manually, like this:
ID | NAME | PARENT | PARENTID
10 | Canidae | Carnivora | 9
11 | Canis | Canidae | 10
12 | Vulpes |Canidae | 10
But if I add or delete a row, the numerals in my
primary key will change, messing up the values in
PARENTID.
Along similar lines, I have another question...
Consider the database table code below, which displays
animal names (representing all taxonomic heirarchies)
in a child-parent relationship:
ID | NAME | PARENT
1 | Mammalia | (NULL)
2 | Carnivora | Mammalia
3 | Canidae | Carnivora
4 | Canis | Canidae
5 | leo | Canis
6 | Felidae | Carnivora
7 | Panthera | Felidae
8 | leo | Panthera
Rows 5 and 8 represent identical species names, leo.
If I type http://geozoo/stacks/leo/ into my browser,
it defaults to Mammalia > Carnivora > Canidae > Canis
> leo, rather than the lion, Mammalia > Carnivora >
Felidae > Panthera > leo
So I need a way to distinguish one leo from the other.
Would it be possible to somehow combine my
auto-incrementing primary key with the field Name,
converting leo / leo to 5leo / 8leo?
There are two things I'd have to deal with...
1. I'd need to weed the numerals out of the display,
which should look like this...
<a href="http://geozoo/stacks/leo/">leo</a>
not this...
<a href="http://geozoo/stacks/8leo/">8leo</a>
2. The numerals would have to be fluid, as I will be
adding and deleting rows. Thus, the lion could be 8leo
one day and 9leo the next.
I can take this to a PHP forum to learn how to
implement it. But I thought someone on this forum
might tell me if it can be done in the first place.
Thanks.
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