thoughts from FOSDEM, status

[Scott Wheeler]

On Sunday 20 March 2005 3:48, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> 1. information and application domains do not map similarly
> 2. puts too much onus on the application developer intead of giving them a
>    tool
> 3. the next step is the network, and this will make things much more
>    complex 
> 4. we have multiple applications for the same information domains 
> 5. i don't see what advantages it brings

I'm actually not suggesting its use, but I think it's an interesting way to 
view the problem.

Formulated differently, "Everything, tell me what you know about 'panda 
bears'"

Now there are problems with encapsulating that sort of high level "knowledge" 
-- it moves away from the "unqualified relationships".  But if the query 
structure returned something very quantifiable -- i.e. boolean properties -- 
it might open up a way to embed extensible query logic without diving into 
fixed ontologies.  (Wow, now that was really clear, right?)

It does however set up some interesting questions:

*) Will it at some point be useful to have domain specific queries that where 
we're essentially crossing application borders?  Will it be useful to be able 
to query something in one application that encapsulates data handling that 
logically "belongs" to another application?

*) If so, what sort of strategies for working with that logic will the 
framework provide?

To put things in semi-concrete terms again -- say we've got a KWord document 
about panda bears.  KWord will know more about that document than we'll be 
able to store in the KLink structure, naturally.  If there were a "KWord 
agent" it might be possible to say, "Is this word important in this 
document?"

I don't think this is all that important for the moment, but I mostly just 
wanted to document the question because I think it's an interesting one 
that's probably worth putting on the mental back-burner for recall at some 
future point.

Cheers,

-Scott

-- 
Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
-John Dewey