Re: [Tracker] Semantic Desktop for Gnome

[אנטולי קרס נר <tombackton gmail com>]

Great news! And thanks for the feedback :)

I went through the various Tracker APIs visible in Devhelp, and I have a
few design questions, which you may be able to help me with.


1. Data storage:
Some file formats, such as binary data of all kinds (music, executables,
video, etc.), are stored as regular files, and only the metadata is
stored in Tracker's database. But many file formats are just text. For
example, my task management app represents the data as a graph of tasks,
and 100% of the data has semantic value. Same thing with notes and
probably many other file formats which describe data in simple XML.

So the question is: Is all the data supposed to be stored in the Tracker
database and fecthed from it every time, or I still should store the XML
data as local files, and "report" semantic data to the Tracker database?

Clearly, my data *does* have some plain text, such as the task
descriptions. I guess it's not valuable to Semantic Desktop, but still,
I'm wondering how to store the data. Another idea may be like this:
Store the task descriptions and all other plain text in regular text
files, but all the semantic-desktop-useful data, like the tags and the
task graphs, will go to the Tracker database.



2. Data Mining

I see two basic approaches to using the database: Writing a miner which
reads my app's XML files and write semantic data to Tracker, or have my
app write the data directly by itself. One clear difference is that if
the apps writes directly, it's then able to avoid storing in regular
files what is already in the Tracker database, and thus avoid having
data stored twice.
Are there other considerations?


Thanks in advance,
Anatoly


On ב', 2013-05-06 at 15:51 -0700, Ivan Frade wrote:
> Hi Anatoly,
>
>
>  Glad to hear about your plans. Tracker was build with use cases like
> those in mind.
>
>
> On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 2:22 PM, אנטולי קרסנר <tombackton gmail com>
> wrote:
>         Hello Tracker team,
>         
>         The issue is, this technology does its best when all apps
>         integrate.
>         Clearly there should be a desktop-wide system for semantic
>         data storage,
>         but Gnome doesn't have one yet.
>
>
> Yes, it does. It is Tracker :) 
>
>  
>         Do you think I can use a possibly augmented tracker-based data
>         store
>         as a general purpose desktop-wide data storage interface, for
>         all apps
>         to use? Clearly there should be a unified interface, and if
>         Tracker
>         already has useful parts implemented, much work can be saved
>         by using
>         existing tools you wrote.
>
>
> You won't need to augment it much. Tracker as it is solves most of
> your storage problems. It is a shared storage accessible from any
> application (in the user session) and the information is represented
> as a graph. You can link resources coming from different sources and
> so on.
>
>
> Maybe you need to tune the ontologies, but that shouldn't be dramatic.
>
>  
>         Looking forward to hearing your opinion,
>
>
> Tracker was created as backend for applications like you were
> describing, but for multiple reasons we never wrote the actual
> "semantic apps". It is great if you can use it and show the potential
> of linking information.
>
> We are glad to help and receive feedback. Do not hesitate on report
> bugs and discuss in this mailing list or in the IRC channel.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Ivan