Re: An Elephant is Faithful 100%

From: Javier Soltero <javier(dot)soltero(at)hyperic(dot)net>
To: Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-advocacy(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: An Elephant is Faithful 100%
Date: 2005-11-21 01:36:43
Message-ID: 4EC49A0A-20C7-4409-A62B-55FA03BEB5AC@hyperic.net
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-advocacy

Hyperic would be happy to donate licenses of HQ for them to monitor
and manage their setup. Please let me know what they need and if
they're interested.

-javier
___________________________________
Javier Soltero
Hyperic | www.hyperic.net
o- 415 738 2566 | c- 415 305 8733
javier(dot)soltero(at)hyperic(dot)net
___________________________________

On Nov 18, 2005, at 1:15 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I recently received the following appeal from the African Elephant
> Database.
> They need help migrating to PostGIS and building out their
> application.
>
> I, personally, cannot imagine a more compelling project which
> deserves the
> PostgreSQL community's collective help. The elephant is our
> mascot! Plus
> the AED folks introduced the idea of making this a general OSS
> project for
> species conservation databases.
>
> Who's available?
>
> ---------------------------
> I'm writing with to explore the possiblity of a collaboration between
> Postgresql, PostGIS and the African Elephant Database (AED) of the
> IUCN/SSC
> African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG). Please allow me to begin by
> giving you a little background on all those acronyms, in reverse
> order.
>
> The AfESG is a group of elephant experts from across the African
> continent
> who, aside from their daily jobs, disinterestedly lend their skills to
> provide technical advice on elephant conservation and management. The
> mission of the AfESG is to promote the long-term conservation of
> African
> elephants throughout their range, and the group focuses its efforts on
> capacity building, alleviation of human-elephant conflict,
> compilation and
> dissemination of technical information, and the development of
> elephant
> conservation strategies. Led by a volunteer chair, the AfESG has a
> small
> secretariat in Nairobi, Kenya. Please see http://iucn.org/afesg/ for
> details.
>
> The AfESG is one of the most active of over 120 Specialist Groups
> of the
> IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC). The largest conservation
> grouping in
> the world, the SSC is a worldwide network of over 7,000 volunteer
> experts
> working to conserve the diversity of species found on Earth. The
> SSC is
> responsible for the production of the IUCN Red List of Threatened
> Species.
> See http://iucn.org/themes/ssc and http://www.redlist.org.
>
> The SSC is the largest of the six commissions of IUCN - The World
> Conservation Union. IUCN is the world's largest and most important
> conservation network. The Union brings together 82 States, 111
> government
> agencies, more than 800 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and
> some
> 10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries in a unique worldwide
> partnership. IUCN's mission is to influence, encourage and assist
> societies
> throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of
> nature and
> to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and
> ecologically
> sustainable. The World Conservation Union was founded in October 1948
> following an international conference in Fontainebleau, France.
> IUCN HQ is
> in Gland, Switzerland. See http://iucn.org/.
>
> The African Elephant Database
> The AED is a geographical information (GIS) system used to maintain an
> accurate and up-to-date record on the distribution and abundance of
> African
> Elephants. The AED is regularly updated, with data on elephant
> range and
> numbers constantly being solicited from wildlife authorities and
> experts
> across the continent, and a major report is produced every three
> years and
> made available in the AfESG website (see http://iucn.org/afesg/aed/).
>
> The AED currently runs in ESRI ArcGIS 9.1., in a personal
> geodatabase (MS
> Access) format. We obtained ArcInfo through one of ESRI's conservation
> program grants - but soon we were being asked to pay for
> maintenance charges
> in excess of USD3,000 per annum. Despite these costs, we are
> considerably
> constrained by the limitations of the set-up - including the MS
> Access 2Gb
> size limit. If we were to upgrade our configuration to a full
> geodatabase
> would involve acquiring ESRI's Spatial Database Engine (SDE) plus a
> commercial RDBMS such as Oracle, DB2 or MS SQL server, at a one-off
> cost of
> several thousand dollars and annual maintenance fees to match.
>
> Such costs are well beyond our reach, we are hoping to build a more
> sustainable solution using open source software. Although
> opensource GIS has
> not evolved as much or as quickly as opensource relational
> databases, we do
> have some hopes that a suitable system could be developed to
> maintain the
> AED. The AED is the most comprehensive species database in
> existence, and we
> believe there would be value in developing a turnkey solution that
> can be
> used to maintain monitoring information on other species for which
> there are
> relatively good data.
>
> We've got the elephant and the database in common. If you think a
> collaboration could be productive and mutually beneficial, please
> let me
> know so that we can begin to explore the options.
>
> I look forward to hearing from you.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Julian Blanc
> Manager, African Elephant Database
> IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group
> Email: julian(dot)blanc(at)iucn(dot)org
> Web: http://iucn.org/afesg/
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
> Aglio Database Solutions
> San Francisco
>
> ---------------------------(end of
> broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

In response to

Browse pgsql-advocacy by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message nhrcommu 2005-11-21 02:28:58 Re: Print advertising
Previous Message Gavin Sherry 2005-11-20 23:59:29 Re: Print advertising