Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Please collect and add any questions you have (and proceed to answer those that are already here).

General questions

• 'The IC is infinitely scalable.' How scalable is it currently? Near future?

• How much redundancy is needed to consider data 'pervasive'?

• What is the history of the IC?

Technical issues

U-forms

• What is the storage size of a u-form (as an abstract data type)?

• Is there a maximum size of a u-form?

• How big are u-forms currently?

• How many possible parents to a particular node?

• Can multiple u-forms with similar attributes be created simultaneously?

• What is the relationship between u-forms and UUID's?

• What if 2 u-forms have the same UUID but different content?

• What is a Shadow u-form?

• Compression Issues

• Is there a way to read only parts of a u-form into memory?

• Is there a way to compress u-forms?

Roles

• Who designs the roles, and who gets to determine its purpose?

• Should there should be a 'role creator' attribute, with date, time, location, etc.?

• Should certain roles have the option of being private?

• Attributed u-forms

• How many possible publishers? Only one?

• Are empty labels that say 'Required' allowable? (They currently exist)

Changes and Shepherding

• How do we choose which data gets shepherded to which venues?

• How do we track changes to data?

• Will editing track changes (so you can see the evolution of a u-form?

• Do the changes create new u-forms?

• What if we add new attributes to an existing database?

• How do we deal with corrupted or bad data in the IC?

• What methods exists for garbage collection?

• What if you wish to 'delete' a u-form or the data existing within?

Programming questions and problems

• Why do accented characters throw exceptions?

User Interface issues

• How do users search the Information Commons?

• How do new users figure out which attribute names and roles best describe their datasets?

• Should attribute names have aliases for everyday users to be able to read them?

Workbench questions

• Civium Workbench questions

• Maximum # of concurrent users?

• Maximum reasonable load?

Reliability and Security

• How do we ensure that datasets in the Information Commons are reliable and trustworthy?

• Who determines data reliability for the IC?

• Who acts as DB administrator of data?

• How are locks and shares dealt with?

• How do contributors make sensitive data available to some organizations but not otherw?

• Will data be encrypted in the IC? In what form?

• Who 'owns' the u-forms?

• Who gains editing rights to revise a u-form? Publisher? Creator?

• Who gains priority of editing? The original editor? 1st come, 1st edit?

• How does the VIA deal with a lost (or broken) node?

Questions about other tools and technologies

• Is the Information Commons another Wikipedia?

• XML Questions

• Can the Information Commons model be represented in XML?

• How are XML & u-forms different?

• With web pages, content & presentation are bound, in the IC approach, they are separated to allow flexible presentation & pervasive data/info...How much does XML do this?

• How analogous are our user-defined schemas to XML's user-defined schemas?

• Semantic Web Questions

• How is the Infomation Commons like the Semantic Web project?

• Cognitive Science/CHI Questions

• In what ways is the VIA model analogous to human memory (cognitive science approach)?

• What language in the VIA model is like SQL?

• Object-oriented database/development

• If OODs aren't scalable (because classes are determined prior to instantiation of objects), what does the VIA model offer as a solution/alternative?

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