Is there any plan to promote data standards?

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Is there any plan to promote data standards?

Safe is a giant global database which means that anyone can use any public data how they see fit. This brings a lot of benefits for all kind of reasons but I fear that without a strong push to promote data standards from the beginning we might end up with a bunch of semi-similar-but-not-quite-enough-to-be-useful bits of data.

For example if you build a store, then maybe each product should be within its own mutable data with a set of specific key-value pair that describe the product. Under “owner_id” you would always get the id of the mutable data that contains the profile of the owner. Under “pictures” a list of picture of the product. Things like that.

If all stores follow the same standard it would be very easy to build novel concept. We could make a “master wishlist” for example where you can add products from all kind of stores. Or a “super cart” to order items from different stores. Or a “global supply chain” that is always up-to-date with the latest prices of your providers.

Or maybe you would like to create a playlist containing a mix of videos, podcasts and songs? Easy done if they all follow the same standard.

I’m just scratching the surface but you get the idea. I think that open-data has the potential to really set Safe apart from the web and I’d love to explore that further.

A comment on the dev forum made me think about an app to help with that but before going too deep into it I’d like to know what people think on the subject and especially if there is currently any plan or vision to promote that.

So anyway, thoughts?

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I was also thinking about it (related post), but I guess we (as a community) are just waiting a bit more until things stabilise more?

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Eheh yeah I guess things are pretty hectic right now over there. They probably can’t wait to start the conversation on higher level stuff but just can’t yet. This can wait some more.

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My thought is that data standards will be derived by many means.

Some by MAIDSAFE themselves, some by people, and some by developers.

Decorum project would be defining the data they use.

I suggested a preliminary data standard for SAFE wallet. How SAFE stores divided coin and coin purse, and not the data standard for wallet data (eg user preferences etc). Maybe @bochaco can define a data standard for the user preferences etc. in wallet applications

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I guess that’s right. Standards will probably naturally emerge from the use of popular apps. Since all public data are open developer will just build layers over them to add the feature they want. That’s gonna be quite interesting to see evolve.

EDIT: Something that should be fairly easy to do though for MaidSafe is to suggest a way to write keys so we don’t end up with a mix of: author_id, AuthorId, authorId, Author_id, etc. I think that would be a good start.

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