A short (revised) version of FluidDB in a Nutshell with some notes attached.

1. FluidDB
in a
Nutshell
http://www.flickr.com/photos/max78/104677840/

2. FluidDB is an openly
writable hosted service
for storing, sharing,
searching and annotating
data.
While this is accurate, it’s not the whole story...

3. Key Concepts
• Objects - represent things*
• Tags - define objects’ attributes
• Namespaces - organise tags
• Permissions - control access
* Not in the object oriented sense of “object”.

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

5. Namespaces/tags
ntoll/rating
terrycojones/books/review
amazon.com/book/title
amazon.com/book/author
amazon.com/book/isbn
esteve/books/cover
timoreilly/has_read
Tags must be defined before being attached to objects. Every user, application or client starts
with a namespace named after their username. Users whose username is a domain name
must own the domain in question (so only Amazon could use the namespace amazon.com).
Every namespace and tag is itself represented by an object (facilitating meta-tagging).

6. Objects (in FluidDB)
represent things
Every object has a unique ID
about = An id =
“book: Dune” object “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8”
The unique “about” tag is optional and used to
identify what the object represents
A conceptual view of an object. Remember the “about” tag is special, optional and unique.

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Different users tag data to the object. Their data is given a context by being attached to the
same object.

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about = An id =
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The values can be of a primitive (searchable) type: numbers, text, booleans etc... OR an
opaque type: images, audio, video or any other sort of data.

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What about data control/privacy..? Permissions are usually applied to the “thing” of interest.
But Fluidinfo wants to make FluidDB openly writeable. So we do something different...

10. r=
ove
/c
ks
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ntoll/
b
ve/
te
es
rating
am
azo
n.c
“87 om/b
- 41 o
=
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517 sbn
5
- 6” =
about = An id =
“book:Dune” object “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-
= am
az
v iew on
/re s”
r=
timoreill
s .c
om
ok rm
er tho
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1973/08
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ojo ve s e” s/t
t”
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...we move the location of the permissions...

11. Permissions apply to
namespaces, tags and
values. Users retain
control of their data.
FluidDB stays writable.
Anyone can tag any sort of data to any object. However, users define who can read, create
and change their namespaces, tags and data.

12. FluidDB is the database
with the heart of a wiki
Nivi
http://venturehacks.com/
Sort of... :-) A wiki is openly writable just like FluidDB. But a wiki doesn’t have permissions to
facilitate privacy and ownership, a query language like a database, nor does it have a simple
API for application developers.

13. SELECT self-catering-cottage FROM
WHERE location NEAR pubs SERVING
AND pub HAS rating > 7 IN
It’s currently NOT possible to create queries like this on the web. Data is stored in walled
gardens behind websites. FluidDB is different because data is stored in context (i.e. it’s
tagged to a shared object).

14. 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).
FluidDB has a simple yet powerful query language (so simple, it fits on this slide). Because
everyone’s data is stored in the context of shared objects it means it’s possible to create
interesting queries using data (for which you have permission to read) from lots of different
sources.

15. Tags attached to the “about:esteve” object.
{“tagPaths”: [
" “twitter.com/username”,
" “twitter.com/fullname”,
" “tunkrank.com/score”,
" “ntoll/met”,
" “terrycojones/met”,
" “python.org/member”,
" “ub.edu/alumni”,
" “ub.edu/bsc”,
" “uoc.edu/msc”,
" ... etc ...
]}
It’s also possible to find information by interrogating an interesting object for all the tags
that are attached to it (that you are allowed to read).

16. A RESTful API
https://fluiddb.fluidinfo.com/objects/OBJECT_ID/NAMESPACE(s)/TAG
HTTP ‘GET’ returns the value,
HTTP ‘PUT’ adds/updates it etc...
Full API: http://api.fluidinfo.com/
FluidDB has an elegant and flexible API for application developers. End users create an
account on FluidDB but use applications to access, update, search and annotate FluidDB.

17. Lots of FOSS client libraries:
http://fluidinfo.com/developers/libs

18. Data becomes social!
Openly writable objects are tagged with data from lots of different sources.

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http://edventure.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewtopia/1413191259/
A really good summary.

21. http://fluidinfo.com/