Re: [oc] Automatic Core Metrics and Documentation

[Graham Seaman <graham@seul.org>]

On Mon, 12 May 2003, John Dalton wrote:

> Here's an idea.
> 
> I wonder if it would be possible to come up
> with some sort of standard for metadata
> about cores (ideally just use an existing
> standard such as the Dublin Core)?
> 
> That way a search engine, such as OpenCollector,
> could allow all 'free/open hardware' sites to
> be accessed using a single interface.
> For example, I could put something like
> 'title:fft AND license:GPL' into OpenCollector
> and it would search the metadata for all sites
> it knows about and return a list of all projects
> with 'fft' in the title and licensed under the GPL.
> 
> It's not much different to the existing
> OpenCollector database, but it allows searches
> to be done on specific fields, and shifts the
> emphasis away from manually updating a centralised
> database to each site maintaining its own metadata.
> 
> Regards
> John
> 
> 
> PS: I've now got my own web server Graham, so
> hopefully I can do some interesting experiments
> with search engines.

Excellent idea. I'd been wondering about doing something similar
with rdf - replacing the opencollector database with an rdf store
that would allow easy remote querying (ie. provide a queriable web 
service, rather than just html output). I haven't done anything about
it yet, because a) I'm lazy and haven't been putting much time into
opencollector, b) because I couldn't see anyone else bothering to
go to the work to put their own data in rdf format - seems pretty low
on the priority list compared with getting better cores ;-), and
c) because I got sidetracked a long time ago and have ended up working
on writing perl front-end for native xml databases, because I couldn't
find any software in existence that did what I wanted.

If opencores did have a standard format for core descriptions I'd happily
do any work on conversion that would be helpful. Dublin core on it's own
isn't enough though, and I've had trouble coming up with a good enough
categorization that would cover a wide range of design types (at least
cores and board designs, maybe also mechanical designs etc). A good design
for the ontology is a key part of this, and it's something I have no
training or experience in...

Graham




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