Taxonomi

Being a geeky sort of database guy I come across problems involving data and information all the time. A classic example is the classification of objects or entities in order to store, search and manuipulate them. Relational Databases are very good at doing this, however they need to be used correctly. In order to use them correctly it's often necessary to categorise every entity with a unique number.
I mentioned to the wife a year or so ago about how it would be helpful to have a global categorisation for every object or entity on the planet (think of an object as a type of thing, like toilet seat or laptop or diamond). This would make our lives so much more easy if every kind of thing had a unique reference number. For example if you knew that you wanted a specific thing like a bracket to attach a toilet seat to the porcelain base unit and you were able to search through a catalogue, then you could pinpoint the reference number and take it with you to the local shop and purchase with ease the item you need instead of having to grapple with technical details with the local expert in the shop.

I was reminded of this idea by an article today. It only touches on the idea, but the fact that it is being mentioned at all has made me think about my idea again.

If there was a website that acted as a search facility and entity registration portal then I think that would be a good start. The amount of work involved in getting something like this to a usable point is huge and I really don't think it'll every come to anything, but it's certainly worth thinking about and for the sake of a simple website and some research I might just try it out .... The growth pattern for this project would be exponential (or certainly slow initial growth followed by huge later increases).


By the way: if anyone knows of a service already like this please let me know