Re: [Tracker] Tags, metadata and date fields

[Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus rath org>]

On 04/03/2010 09:56 AM, Adrien Bustany wrote:
> > I am currently using a set of self-developed scripts to manage a
> > document archival system. When a document is added to the archive,
> > the user has to assign a name, tags from a predefined list, a date and
> > optionally a couple of keywords. The script then extracts the plain
> > text from the document, adds the additional metadata and writes
> > out an XML file. The XML file is then indexed by Swish++.
> >
> > For retrieval, another script asks for keywords, tags and a date-range,
> > invokes Swish++ to do the search and retrieve the metadata, presents a
> > nice list with results and finally opens the original document.
> >
> > I was wondering to what extent it would be possible to replace this
> > system with something more established like tracker. From the
> > documentation, I gather that it is possible to assign tags to the
> > documents. But can I also add additional meta data, like title, keywords
> > and timestamps and show them in the result list? Is it possible to
> > constrain the results to a given time span?
>
> Yes, Tracker provides ontologies (= metadata standards) for tags, date,
> keywords and stuff. Tracker uses the Nepomuk ontologies
> (www.semanticdesktop.org/ontologies/) to describe its data.
> The queries are then done with a langage called SPARQL. SPARQL is a very
> powerful languages, and allows you to of course provide dates constraints,
> but also any type of constraints. I invite you to look at a SPARQL
> introduction, or at the Tracker documentation for that
> (http://live.gnome.org/Tracker/Documentation).

The querying with SPARQL looks quite promising indeed, thanks for the
quick answer!

However, I wasn't really able to find any information on how to get the
metadata into my index in the first place. Could you give me some
information where to start? Do I move the documents into a
tracker-watched folder and manually modify the database after the
documents have been indexed? Or do I explicitly ask tracker to add a
specific file with specific metadata to the index? Or do I add the
metadata as extended attributes of the file and put it in a watched
folder? Or something else entirely?


Best,

   -Nikolaus

-- 
 ÂTime flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a Banana.Â

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