Re: New module proposal: tracker

[Jamie McCracken <jamie mccrack googlemail com>]

On Tue, 2009-08-18 at 20:26 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
> Le mardi 18 août 2009, à 20:19 +0200, Philip Van Hoof a écrit :
> > We'll do our best and are committed to formulate our answers in a
> > non-vague way and improve the communication of the project's members,
> > about the project, towards the community.
> 
> Maybe just clearly state what tracker (or tracker-store, the thread
> already lost me :/) will bring to GNOME if integrated. I don't want to
> hear about ontology, sparql, data store, indexer, or whatever. I want to
> know what it will bring me as a user, and what opportunity it gives me as a
> hacker, for my modules.
> 
> So, yeah. Just list use cases. (Somebody already gave a few examples in
> a mail, iirc, but it got lost in the noise for me).
> 


tracker would provide a centralised storage of metadata which means
multiple apps can share metadata safely, get notifications when it
changes and know at design time what metadata is potentially available
(via a schema similar to gconf)

All metadata can be cross referenced in queries allowing for powerful
search capabilities all via a uniform api and search language

Use cases:

1) Centralised storage, tagging, search and query of bookmarks for
Epiphany 

2) Zeitgeist integration of events with said search and query
capabilities

3) Centralisation of all tags (nautilus, zeitgeist, fspot.
facebook/flickr etc). No need to duplicate tagging in different apps 

4) Make web service integration easier with optional indexing of
flickr/facebook

5) Allow for possibility of uniform services for things like contacts
instead of them being redefined for all clients (evolution, pidgin, web
services) - this would require a separate contacts service but a
federated db like tracker is an essential component for this

6) Allow common database to be used for things like music players

7) Allow more thin client development as minimal code would be needed to
integrate search and metadata in apps if done from scratch without
tracker

8) Allow for different views of data such as get me all images instead
of traditional file/folder view

Im sure there are many more...

jamie