Re: Massively distributed data

"x" <x-false_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message news:40a236f2$1_at_post.usenet.com...
> **** Post for FREE via your newsreader at post.usenet.com ****
>
>
> "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message
> news:c7tacc$sgp$1_at_news.netins.net...
> > "x" <x-false_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:40a20063$1_at_post.usenet.com...
> > > **** Post for FREE via your newsreader at post.usenet.com ****
> > >
> > >
> > > "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message
> > > news:c7s5um$7nk$1_at_news.netins.net...
> > > > I think this is a fascinating question and maybe some of you will
> agree
> > > and
> > > > will have suggestions. I sat next to Jim Waldo from Sun at a lunch
at
> a
> > > > Jini Community Conference in Boston earlier this year. He was
talking
> > > about
> > > > medical information coming directly from people in some way. The
idea
> > > would
> > > > be to have information about the health of an individual come from
> their
> > > > body. This was still in the stage of formulating the problem
> statement,
> > > so
> > > > the rest is just related to my own reflections on the problem.
> > >
> > > > Possible simple scenario:
> > >
> > > I hope this would not be possible :-)
> >
> > OK, let's figure that somehow there is data from individuals with some
> > ability to push itself and/or be accessed. Remove the need to consider
> the
> > options for how this data flows from the person.
>
> But this is a very important issue and cannot be easily removed.
>
> > Yes, you are right that at any point of interest, you would want to
> > take/have a snapshot of all of the data attributes.
>
> If the data is "massively distributed" how could this be done ?

I'm just talking about getting all data related to a single person at a single point in time (or getitng the value at the closest time available). One flawed, but possibly useful, approach would be that if a particular value goes from green to yellow, then all other info is requested asap. In addition, if there were some history of n seconds worth of data (perhaps residing at each collection point) then that data could be forwarded as well. So, when exceptional conditions arise, then all data for the past n seconds from each data capturing device is made available to a some sort of expert system/AI/symptom rules processor for further automated and/or human diagnosis so that it can be transmitted back to you and you can read it from your contact lens or whatever. But maybe a modern mood-ring reflects that your blood pressure is exceeding normal ranges and that doesn't need any computers outside of your own set of monitoring devices to pass that info to the ring. So, some information needs to flow to a data hub, but some doesn't.

> > Now, what about the fact that this could BE a database, but the natural
> > database (and this is where my question is) seems to be one where you
can
> > navigate from node to node -- individual values, rather than one where
you
> > treat all values of a "relation" as a set, using set operators and all.
> If
> > this data were available, what would our "live" database look
> ike? --dawn
>
> It doesn't matter how it look like, it only matter what you can do with
> it.

But when talking about relational theory and such, we are talking about what data looks like, right -- the format and available operators.

> About "navigation from node to node" :
> 1) What is a "node" ? An "atomic" piece of data, a set, a graph ?
> 2) For "navigation from node to node" I suppose you have "links"
> What is a "link" ? An "atomic" piece of data, a set, a graph ?
> 3) What is "navigation" ?
> If you need to "navigate" from a "start" "node" A to a "destination"
"node"
> B and there is no direct "link" from A to B (or there are several links)
you
> need to specify the path from A to B. How would you do this ?
>
> In what way "navigation" differ from the relational operators ?

I was going to answer some of the above and then saw this juicy question -- ripe for a relational theorist to answer. If no one bites, I'll give it a try later. --dawn Received on Wed May 12 2004 - 18:54:39 CEST