In the current atomspace, atoms are indexed by their type, i.e given a type we can retrieve all the atoms that have that type. But there is no other away of adding custom indices in the atomspace. For example, if we want to index nodes by their name, there is no way of doing this.
As discussed in this issue <https://github.com/MOZI-AI/annotation-scheme/issues/192>, we plan to expand the annotation-service, which uses the AtomSpace to store genomics data, to support the annotation of more types in addition to genes. Currently, when I user submits a list of ids to the service, it is assumed that these ids/symbols represent `GeneNode`s. But in the case where the input can be a protein, a drug molecule, pathway or a gene, there is no direct way of retrieving what type of the atom with the given name is unless we iterate through all atoms searching for that particular id. This isn't be a good approach from performance standpoint. But if we had a custom index - e.g `name_index`, on the ids/names of the atoms, it will be easier to search the atoms by name and identify the type that the atom belongs to. Hence, if there is a way to add custom indices to the atomspace, it will greatly simplify some searches. Or maybe there is a way to do what I described above without the need for an index. If so, please share it. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "opencog" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/opencog/27892502-0dfb-4042-a805-30a1520f6250n%40googlegroups.com.
