Disqus - Latest Comments for tommaguire

Re: Less Is More!

tommaguire — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:46:19 -0000

So you make an exclamation "Less is More!", any chance you could give us a glimpse of what you mean? I assume you are talking about an abstraction that operates at the application level but it is pretty unclear from the content of this article.

Re: Micro-burst: Metadata

tommaguire — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:28:26 -0000

I think we are talking at several different levels. So let's constrain the conversation about "linked-data" to Atmos cloud storage. There is a resource that represents the content object and there is a resource that represents the "metadata" object. What you are suggesting is that in the cloud storage world you'd like to see the consistency model for the relationship between the metadata and the data ruled by "ACID"-like semantics (perhaps I'm overstating your position).
I would argue that "linked-data" requires polar opposite semantics where the user of the data needs to assume that data will be missing and inaccessible (read 404). The ownership point I was making before is part of this discussion; can I assume that I can make geographically distributed updates (or even just validations of garbage collection), do I have the rights? Even if I have the rights; can I tolerated the latency?
IMO, in this world we need to move to "BASE" semantics (Basically Available Softstate that is Eventually consistent). It is more like the way the web works today and isn't that the point of Cloud storage?

Re: Micro-burst: Metadata

tommaguire — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:03:08 -0000

I agree that lost or isolated data may be important to a business. So "broken link"? That could mean:
1) the domain hosting the link is gone
2) the network is down
3) the "linked-data" resource has been destroyed/deleted
4) the "linked-data" resource has been migrated/moved/archived

Most of these point to a more interesting question of ownership, not linkage. So if you assume you "own" all the data then you either have control of the above situations or you don't. So if you don't have control and you need to mitigate then the typical strategy is to "copy" the data locally. IMO, that has just as many downsides (perhaps more) than "lost" or "broken" links. Missing data is better than stale/bad/incorrect data that is out-of-sync with the "authoritative" data.

Re: Micro-burst: Metadata

tommaguire — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:07:01 -0000

Ok, so in the digital world the distinction that you make between data and metadata gets AWFULLY blurry. If I'm searching for "Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" is the full-text index of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" the data of the play or metadata of the play? The distinction between data and metadata has more to do with the physical nature of things and categorization of those physical things. For digital objects that really fades away.

In the end you can never hope to capture all the "metadata" in the object so you are going to be forced to deal with your option 2 anyway.

To me, it's all just linked-data anyway....