An Introduction To FluidDB - a social database in the cloud

An Introduction to FluidDB http://ﬂuidinfo.com

FluidDB is a database “in the cloud” built by Fluidinfo and currently in private-Alpha testing.

There is only one FluidDB. All users and applications share the same database.

Why..?

As Wikipedia is to traditional encyclopaedias so FluidDB is to traditional database solutions.

/ http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/psd/1428129861 Make the world writeable

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/juhansonin/3227851094/ No pre-deﬁned schema

The Glass Wall http://www.liamdelahunty.com/tips/usability_bbc_redesign_the_glass_wall.php Create, share, organise and understand information

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/chiaramarra/1048662923/ Simplify and enhance the model of control

Key Concepts • Objects - represent things* • Tags - deﬁne object’s attributes • Namespaces - organise tags • Permissions - control access * NOT instantiations of classes as in OO, but simply “objects” in the common-sense use of the term.

Data structure subject / predicate / value (similar to RDF)

Data structure object / tag / value (in FluidDB parlance)

http://ntoll.org/images/93.jpg Objects are tagged with information

Namespaces and tags are pre-deﬁned by users ntoll/rating terrycojones/books/review amazon.com/book/title amazon.com/book/author amazon.com/book/isbn esteve/books/cover timoreilly/has_read (Every namespace and tag has a description and is itself represented by an object so meta-tagging is allowed)

A basic object: about = An id = “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8” “book:Dune” object (The about tag is a convention to help indicate what the object represents. It is optional but must be unique)

r= ove /c ks oo ntoll/ b ve/ te es rating am azo n.c “87 om/b -41 ook = 8-7 517 s/isbn 5 - 6” = about = An id = “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8” “book:Dune” object = am az iew on timoreill v /re s” r= s .c om ok rm er tho /bo wo “D /bo nes and un ok erb s/au ojo ve s e” s/t t” y/has_re ryc I lo itle k H ok ter “ = ran /bo “F om ad n.c azo am

r= ove /c ks oo ntoll/ b ve/ te es rating am azo n.c “87 om/b -41 ook = 8-7 517 s/isbn 5 - 6” = about = An id = “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8” “book:Dune” object Value Types: = am az iew on timoreill v /re s” r= s .c om ok rm er tho /bo wo “D /bo nes and un ok boolean erb s/au ojo ve s e” s/t t” y/has_re ryc I lo itle k H ok ter “ = string (& set) ran /bo “F om numeric ad n.c opaque azo am null

Opaque tag values each have a MIME type type = image/png

Other “primitive” types are returned as json

A simple and elegant RESTful API https://fluiddb.fluidinfo.com/objects/OBJECT_ID/NAMESPACE(S)/TAG e.g. https://fluiddb.fluidinfo.com/objects/e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8/ntoll/rating HTTP ‘GET’ returns the value, HTTP ‘PUT’ adds/updates it etc... Full API: http://api.ﬂuidinfo.com/ﬂuidDB/api/*/*/*

snoissimreP (seem to be back-to-front)

r= Traditional: oo ks /c ove ntoll/ b ve/ te es rating am azo n.c “87 om/b -41 ook = 8-7 517 s/isbn 5 - 6” = about = id = “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8” “book:Dune” = am az iew on timoreill v /re s” r= s .c om ok rm er tho /bo wo “D /bo nes and un ok erb s/au ojo ve s e” s/t t” y/has_re ryc I lo itle k H ok ter “ = ran /bo “F om ad n.c azo am

r= FluidDB: ks /c ove ntoll/ b oo ve/ te rating am es azo n.c “87 om/b = -41 ook 8-7 517 s/isbn 5 - 6” = about = An id = “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8” “book:Dune” object = am az view on /re s” .c r= timoreill s om ok rm er tho /bo wo “D /bo nes and un ok erb s/au ojo ve s e” s/t t” ryc I lo itle k H ok y/has_re ter “ = ran /bo “F om n.c ad azo am

Permissions • Apply to namespaces, tags and tag-values not objects • Scoped by actions (e.g. “see”, “create”, “read”) • Either “open” or “closed” with a list of exceptions

Search (is simple)

FluidDB’s Query Language • Equality & Inequality: To ﬁnd objects based on the numeric values or exact textual values, e.g., tim/rating > 5, or geo/name = "Llandefalle". • Textual: To ﬁnd objects based on text matching their tag values, for example, sally/opinion matches “fantastic”. • Presence: Use has to request objects that have a given tag. For example, has sally/opinion. • Set contents: The contains operator can be used to select objects with a matching value in a set of strings. The query mary/product-reviews/keywords contains "kids" would match the object with a tag called /mary/product- reviews/keywords and value ["cool", "kids", "adventure" ]. • Exclusion: Exclude objects with the except keyword. For example has nytimes.com/appeared except has james/seen. The except operator performs a set difference. • Logic: Query components can be combined with and and or. For example, has sara/rating and tim/rating > 5. • Grouping: Parentheses can be used to group query components. For example, has sara/rating and (tim/rating > 5 or mike/rating > 7).

er... that’s it (QL ﬁts on one slide and enhancements are coming soon)

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/8001265@N08/2259250324/ LIVE DEMO!

Where?

• http://fluidinfo.com - First stop for more • http://fluidinfo.com/accounts/new - Sign up! • http://tickery.net - Twitter on steroids • http://bit.ly/dicP8O - FluidRefreshmentDB • http://fluiddbexplorer.appspot.com - Browser

• @fluidDB @terrycojones @esteve on Twitter • #fluidDB on Freenode IRC • http://groups.google.com/group/fluiddb-users • http://groups.google.com/group/fluiddb-discuss

Lots of 3rd party libraries: http://bit.ly/9vvIal Java, Clojure, Lisp, .NET, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP & Javascript (all open-source)

We’re listening to you though the usual caveats apply ;-)

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/260004685/ Nicholas Tollervey ntoll@ntoll.org ntoll on Twitter & IRC

Questions / Discussion

http://fluidinfo.com	666
http://www.fluidinfo.com	282
http://skillsmatter.com	161
https://fluidinfo.com	88
http://www.slideshare.net	44
https://www.fluidinfo.com	9
http://paper.li	7
http://a0.twimg.com	3
http://coderwall.com	2
http://new.fluidinfo.com	1
http://localhost	1
http://localhost:8000	1
http://www.mefeedia.com	1
http://fluidinfo.com:81	1

An Introduction To FluidDB - a social database in the cloud

by Nicholas Tollervey on Apr 23, 2010

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