Re: Finding and Reminding, tech issues, 3.0 and beyond

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Mon, 2010-04-12 at 11:31 +0100, Martyn Russell wrote:
> On 10/04/10 22:10, Owen Taylor wrote:
> > On Sat, 2010-04-10 at 11:43 -0400, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> >> On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 18:09 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> > Well, certainly tracking and indexing file metadata doesn't *require*
> > anything as complex, or general purpose as RDF. I have some concerns
> > about the complexity, but as long as we don't get to the point where
> > understanding RDF and ontologies is a prerequisite for developing a
> > GNOME app, we're probably fine.
> 
> I don't think this is such a bad thing. What other choices are there? 
> understanding how to extract the metadata from a specific file yourself 
> or understanding SQL to talk directly to a database? At least SPARQL is 
> something in between which provides the right level of power without 
> exposing the DB.

And it ends up being neither. If you're manipulating file formats you
understand, or if you understand the concepts and a library does the
work for you, you're better off extracting the metadata yourself. If you
had a real database, you could reuse what you learnt in DB classes, or
learn from any number of online resources.

The fact that SPARQL is neither is a problem for applications
developers. I couldn't have come up with stuff like:
http://git.gnome.org/browse/totem/tree/src/plugins/tracker/totem-tracker-widget.c#n388

Better come up with good documentation before offering it to developers.