Comments wanted on DBMS - GRASS linkage

[Joel Jones]

Greetings, GRASS Users and Programmers.

The GRASS Development Team is working on a project to develop tools for
integrating GRASS with relational databases.  What we would like from you
are your ideas, speculations, and wishes on how such tools should work.
Some comments that would be very useful to us would be something like:
  "I need a tool db.xxxx that does thus and such"
or
  "If only the digitizer could do this..."

While we have a lot of ideas already, we need to hear from you what you
need.  We need to know concretely what applications you could build (or have
built, or would like to have built) if you had the capabilities we are trying
to design. Our present design has the following features:

  o attribution of spatial features
  o representation of composite features
  o attribution of composite features
  o representation of intra and cross database table references
  o access to databases across a network
  o centralized listing of all GRASS maps with attribution

A detailed description of what each of the above means is given below.  To
give us your ideas, send email to:
  jjones at zorro.cecer.army.mil

To see an HTML version of the current design, use a Web browser on:
  http://www.cecer.army.mil/~jjones/dbmi_grass_link_1.html

Joel Jones
jjones at zorro.cecer.army.mil

Detailed Description

Attribution of Spatial Features
  A primitive spatial feature can have associated with it information that is
representable in a relational database.  Multiple types of information may be
associated with the same feature.

Representation of Composite Features
  Collections of several primitive features and/or other composite features
may be aggregated to form a composite feature.

Attribution of Composite Features
  Attributes that apply to the composite feature as a whole can be represented.

Representation of Intra and Cross Database Table References
  For complex attribution, the attributes associated with a spatial feature may
refer to attributes in other relational tables.  These tables may be in the
same database as the attributes immediately associated with the feature, or may
be in another database.

Access to Databases across a Network
  The relational database containing the attribution for a GRASS map may be
located on a machine separate from the one containing the GRASS data.

Centralized Listing of All GRASS Maps with Attribution
  A single table contains information about all GRASS maps that have
attribution associated with them.  This enables the writing of browsing
applications.