Hmmm, it does seem very similar to the FOST demonstration I showed you about 5 years ago :-)
I think that maybe a more general discussion of what FOST does may help with what we have done to it over the past five years.
The aim of FOST was quite simple - allow developers to build systems with highly structured data and to allow users to add new links between these data because they think in different terms.
In order to do this we make a distinction between "active" data and "passive" data. Active data is the information that you need in order to execute an application - in our case they are normally business operations (invoicing, accounts, regulatory compliance etc.). The passive data is the extra information that allows humans to interact with a system more easily (storage of notes, relations between entities etc.).
The active data in the systems follows a rigid structure expressed in SQL tables with fields in a normal way. Over this we layer an Object Oriented view point that then allows this structure to be extended in ways that are useful to the system users.
We have found this to be a useful way of doing things. It means that we can concentrate on the system aspects and any other data capture can be added in very late in the process (e.g. "Oh, by the way, we need to store the name of the guy's secretary as well").
We also have some data-interchange tools that allow us to define input file formats as meta-data in our system so that the task of configuring which data goes where can be done simply. Extra data can always be fetched and stored to augment the fixed data structures.
These seem to be some of the things that Dan wants for Kendra, but they may be expressed in different ways (both in language and system code).
K
Kirit Sælensminde - Obsideon Limited
http://www.obsideon.com ICQ:10009115
-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Harris [mailto:daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 31 January 2003 01:44
To: k-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [kDev] kendraTools test 1...
Hi All,
I'm getting really buzzed on the kendraTools test. It's getting fun.
It's great that people have tried it out. I see Neil's been there.
But now I'm thinking how to take it further. My immediate desire was to
comment on the relationships. What that means is include the complete
relationship (Object|Link|Object) as an object in itself that can then
be included in another relationship. For example:
(pigs really fly | is a | false statement) | given | current
understanding
and
(animals | can mean | Ireland) | really | doesn't make sense
And it would be neat if this could work recursively so one could
continue to nest objects. Hmmmm... the code is on display here:
http://www.kendra.org.uk/develop-code.php
... if anyone's after a headache!
I'm not exactly sure where this is going but call it a bit of
kendraFun! ;-)
Cheers Daniel
On Monday, January 27, 2003, at 01:57 pm, Daniel Harris wrote:
> http://www.kendra.org.uk/tools1/