What's your opinion of file-tagging systems like Tabbles and the new file tagging feature in OS X finder? Tabbles is a far cry from full WinFS, but it enables some interesting organizational techniques. I've been using it lately and I like it. But tags don't always seem to be enough. In addition to tags, I'd like to have genuine fields.
Seems like a NoSQL database would be a decent core for a poor-man's WinFS implementation.
Actually, I haven't been keeping up with new tools and techniques for information management since WinFS died.
I took a look at the Tabbles website and watched one of the videos. It seems good! You're right, it's not full WinFS, but with hierarchical tags you can go a long way towards manually solving some of the same problems. I'll have to take it for a spin.
I just did a quick Google search for OS X 10.9's tagging. It looks like it doesn't support hierarchical tags? If it doesn't, then personally it's a non-starter.
(I'd dig in to them more, but I have to be brief: I'm not sure when HN disallows new replies to comments...)
Seems like a NoSQL database would be a decent core for a poor-man's WinFS implementation.
Prior to joining WinFS I was working on my own solution to kind of the same thing as WinFS. I was going to use a traditional RDBMS - Perforce, actually. In retrospect, I was basically looking to serialize a graph to/from the relational model. At that time, I don't think I knew graph databases existed - I'm definitely going to look into them when I pick up the problem again.
NoSQL + graph database? That could be very interesting.
In re. your other comment: Thanks for the link! I'll take a look at that.
If you love thinking about this sort of stuff, maybe you should get back into it! :-)
It's dangerous! One day I'm focusing on solving specific use cases, and the next I'm a hermit in the woods asking, "What does it mean to mean?" ;)
But, you're right. For several years I've been working on self-employment, with the goal of being self-sufficient so I could devote my time to solving my "forever" problems - the #1 problem being this one. That didn't work out, so I'm on the job market. This thread has re-inspired me. Maybe I can find a position solving these problems full-time. That would be great.
It seems like you're interested in the same problem space? Definitely hit me up via email: waltergr@gmail.com