Interesting idea. I've no idea if it's ever been thought of, but I for one would be interested in figuring out if this could be implemented in the n-lab. How many categories do think would actually go into such a database? Would it actually need to be a database, or would a hyperlinked table be sufficient? Andrew On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 12:42:46PM -0400, Andrew Salch wrote:
I have found nLab very helpful as well, for when I need to look up a definition of some higher-categorical construction and I don't have a book or paper on hand to refer to. I have thought many times, though, that it would be great if there were some Web-accessible database of categories which are commonly encountered in mathematics, and their properties; I often find that I need to know if certain kinds of limits, or colimits, or injective envelopes, etc. etc. etc. exist in a particular category, and having some central database to look at (which would hopefully tell me what I need to know as well as cite whatever paper the result was proved in) would be a lot quicker than having to either search the literature for such a result or try to re-prove the result myself. Does anyone know if there have been any attempts to compile such a database?
Thanks, Andrew S.
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