Kevin Ross wrote:
FYI- I happened to run across this: http://java.sun.com/products/jmi/
"java metadata interface"
Has anyone else seen this?
Given that it's based on MOF/OMG, I think it'd be wise to include
support for this in Xindice if possible (as an addon). The only
downside (there are plenty of upsides advocating adoption) is the
complexity. It's not lightweight, thought it's at least pretty
well documented. It *would* require that somebody actually create
the implementation, which is certainly non-trivial.
I'm not sure if this will have any impact on what we are trying to do,
but until all the options are examined (including Murray's), I think the
code should stay in the "addons" directory.
One question that comes to mind is that currently XNode is only
an API, not an implementation. Would people expect the Xindice
code (as delivered) to contain an implementation? I could perhaps
extract the implementation from my current application and provide
it to this project, but not prior to finishing my lit review,
which means nothing before about early February.
I do feel that eventually, a metadata implementation should be part of
the main trunk...
A good reason to not include a metadata implementation in the main
code base is that there are quite a lot of approaches to metadata
storage, and to the types and complexities of metadata itself, and
these vary depending on application. I developed the XNode API as
an attempt at creating a *very* lightweight API. If there are three
approaches, ordered in terms of complexity, we'd have
1. XNode API
2. (Dave Viner's) Metadata implementation
3. JMI-in-Xindice
If we make the Xindice addons truly modular, then any of the proposed
metadata solutions as well as other non-essential features can be
easily added to a Xindice application without enlarging the core code
and complicating the lives of those who don't want or need metadata.
I like the idea of a trim Xindice rather than including everything,
and given this is a public process I'd hate to see it bloat out like
some things.
In your design, Dave, couldn't the entire metadata tree be under
its own package rather than having MetaSystemCollection be in
package org.apache.xindice.core? (I do understand you've probably
designed it as part of core.)
Vladimir R. Bossicard wrote:
I've been working with Gianugo Rabellino offline to add his
requests to the
MetaData implementation that I've been working on. I think this is now
ready for inclusion in the Xindice tree.
Murray Altheim would like to add the XNode API somewhere in the tree
and the idea of having a "xindice-addons" project makes more and more
sense. I haven't take a look at your MetaData implementation but
could it be possible to include this into an external project?
The idea would be to keep the core of Xindice as slick as possible and
have some external module to add functionalities.
Is this possible with your MetaData extension?
-Vladimir
Murray
......................................................................
Murray Altheim <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK
If you're the first person in a new territory,
you're likely to get shot at.
-- ma
