Introduction

[dm...@comcast.net]

Hello everyone.

My name is Donald McLean and I am a software engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore Maryland. I have been using Derby + Hibernate for a couple of personal projects and have recently started using it at work. Those who frequent the Wiki may have noticed my contibution of a simple framework that I created to simplify using Hibernate with Derby.

For months, I have been kicking around a number of problems that I constantly run into and so I have started working on a small project. At Jean's encouragement, I am posting my reasonings for starting this project below.

I think that this project is a good use for Hibernate + Derby. I have already
started working on it and plan on contributing it to Apache. I would be
interested in hearing the thoughts of other members of the Derby community.

Take care,

Donald
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why LifeCache?

In our modern information driven society, I find myself often unable
to locate information that I need and that I have. It may be in an email
that I forgot to file or that is not filed in the folder that I expected
it to be in or perhaps I need a document on my office computer - or my
home computer.

Whatever the cause, I need a new way to store, manage and organize the
constant flow of information that I want - or need - to keep track of.

Specific cases for LifeCache:

When I read POP email, it gets downloaded to the computer that I read it
on - but I need to be able to move it, or at least access it, on other
computers.

My email account is getting full, but if I download it to one computer
I won't be able to access it on any other computers.

My email account is getting full in part because there are obsolete
emails filling it up. I want to be able to mark emails so that they
will automatically come up for review on a periodic basis, on a
certain date or after a certain event has occurred.

A new guy has been assigned to my project and I have a collection of
documents, notes, callendar entries and emails that he will want to
have access to. I want to push a button and grant him access to them -
or give him the option to download the whole batch to his computer.

I have a long email discussing several topics. I want to be able to
associate it with all of those topics without having more than one
copy of it.

I have an email with a text part and a large attachment. I want to be able
to keep everything EXCEPT for the attachment.

I have all this information that is related - except that it is scattered
amongst text documents, HTML documents, PDF documents, emails, chat logs.......

I want change tracking for something that isn't a Microsoft Word document.
Maybe it's an email, maybe it's a text document.

I don't trust someone else to store my data but now that I have hundreds
gigabytes in disk space and high-speed internet access, why should I
need to?

Re: Introduction

[David Van Couvering <Da...@Sun.COM>]

Very interesting!

I ask this because it will be asked: how do you distinguish this (other 
than it being open source and portable) from Google Desktop and the 
stuff that is coming out in Windows Vista where basically your entire 
filesystem is tied in with a relational database (MS SQL Server) and is 
fully indexable/queryable?

David


dmclean62@comcast.net wrote:
> Hello everyone.
> 
> My name is Donald McLean and I am a software engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore Maryland. I have been using Derby + Hibernate for a couple of personal projects and have recently started using it at work. Those who frequent the Wiki may have noticed my contibution of a simple framework that I created to simplify using Hibernate with Derby.
> 
> For months, I have been kicking around a number of problems that I constantly run into and so I have started working on a small project. At Jean's encouragement, I am posting my reasonings for starting this project below.
> 
> I think that this project is a good use for Hibernate + Derby. I have already
> started working on it and plan on contributing it to Apache. I would be
> interested in hearing the thoughts of other members of the Derby community.
> 
> Take care,
> 
> Donald
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Why LifeCache?
> 
> In our modern information driven society, I find myself often unable
> to locate information that I need and that I have. It may be in an email
> that I forgot to file or that is not filed in the folder that I expected
> it to be in or perhaps I need a document on my office computer - or my
> home computer.
> 
> Whatever the cause, I need a new way to store, manage and organize the
> constant flow of information that I want - or need - to keep track of.
> 
> Specific cases for LifeCache:
> 
> When I read POP email, it gets downloaded to the computer that I read it
> on - but I need to be able to move it, or at least access it, on other
> computers.
> 
> My email account is getting full, but if I download it to one computer
> I won't be able to access it on any other computers.
> 
> My email account is getting full in part because there are obsolete
> emails filling it up. I want to be able to mark emails so that they
> will automatically come up for review on a periodic basis, on a
> certain date or after a certain event has occurred.
> 
> A new guy has been assigned to my project and I have a collection of
> documents, notes, callendar entries and emails that he will want to
> have access to. I want to push a button and grant him access to them -
> or give him the option to download the whole batch to his computer.
> 
> I have a long email discussing several topics. I want to be able to
> associate it with all of those topics without having more than one
> copy of it.
> 
> I have an email with a text part and a large attachment. I want to be able
> to keep everything EXCEPT for the attachment.
> 
> I have all this information that is related - except that it is scattered
> amongst text documents, HTML documents, PDF documents, emails, chat logs.......
> 
> I want change tracking for something that isn't a Microsoft Word document.
> Maybe it's an email, maybe it's a text document.
> 
> I don't trust someone else to store my data but now that I have hundreds
> gigabytes in disk space and high-speed internet access, why should I
> need to?