Better Indices
Speaking of better indices, I’m investigating RDF, the Resource Description Framework. It’s a language for representing facts. Once represented, databases of facts can be queried using RDF query languages. It’s very similar to Prolog systems except in that it’s a distributed database, where Prolog databases are centralised. It’s also a sensible approach to the “Frame problem” of (Classical) Artifical Intelligence. I think it might be useful in representing the kinds of ad-hoc databases people work with all the time and file in structures like word-processing documents or text files, spreadsheets, pieces of paper, sticky-notes etc. etc.
RDF seems to me to be a way of getting the benefits of the relational data model — the foundations of all of today's most commonly-used database software — without the disadvantages of centralisation and non-relational query languages (SQL). It feels like it might map pretty closely to the ways people think about many everyday tasks and objects.
- Could Zowie objects be RDF-describable? What about behaviour? Users might create new RDF objects and annotate them via a GUI, building and querying a knowledge database with the system...
- Common-sense knowledge: is there a version of Cyc's common-sense knowledge-base encoded in RDF? (Cyc, Eurisko, Douglas Lenat) </ul>