Re: beagle r4019 - in trunk/beagle: Util beagled beagled/DownloadsMetadataQueryable

["Kevin Kubasik" <kevin kubasik net>]

On 10/3/07, Debajyoti Bera <dbera web gmail com> wrote:
> > > > Author: kkubasik
> > > > Date: 2007-10-02 21:55:29 +0100 (Tue, 02 Oct 2007)
> > > > New Revision: 4019
> > > > ViewCVS link: http://svn.gnome.org/viewcvs/beagle?rev=4019&view=rev
> > > >
> > > > Added:
> > > >    trunk/beagle/Util/Firefox.cs
> > > >    trunk/beagle/beagled/DownloadsMetadataQueryable/
>
> Just a passing comment, I for some reason dont feel very comfortable with this
> backend. Its an uneasy feeling, probably because of the fact that
> the "metadata" (i.e. the origin of a file) information is not available in
> the file itself nor there is a guarantee that the metadata is always correct.
> It is guaranteed that the metadata is correct when the file is downloading or
> when the download finishes. But after its done downloading, the information
> in firefox's downloads.rdf is not guaranteed to be accurate anymore. For
> instance, if I overwrite the downloaded copy with a file from somewhere else,
> the metadata would apply to the new file but would be wrong!
Yeah, thats the pickle, In a perfect world we could conceive of some
master plan which binds properties across movement for the metadata,
we already track the event, so I wouldn't think that it would be
impossible.
>
> It probably wont do a lot of practical damage if some files contain
> incorrect "origin" information but if this trend continues, I am afraid soon
> there will be inconsistencies difficult to resolve. ExternalMetadata is a
> tricky area.
No doubt, and its fine if we disable this backend for now (read, the
0.3 release) and hold off on it until we have a more solid plan for
relational data, thats cool.
>
> Whats the correct approach ? Not sure. Definitely something which can
> guarantee that the metadata is always correct. Which brings me to only one
> conclusion: attach the metadata to the file directly e.g. by storing it in an
> xattr (or some secret sqlite file) during downloading. I am not sure if this
> is implementable.
I would think the xattr wouldn't be impossible.. not fo querying, but
if at download we attach the xattr, and just index it every time we
hit the file, that would work.
>
> - dBera
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Debajyoti Bera @ http://dtecht.blogspot.com
> beagle / KDE fan
> Mandriva / Inspiron-1100 user
>


-- 
Cheers,
Kevin Kubasik
http://kubasik.net/blog