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Sixth - system for data storage, computation, exploration and interaction

1 Vision / goal

Provide versioned, clustered, flexible, distributed, multi-dimensional data storage engine for the Sixth computation engine.

  • Speaking of traditional relational database and object oriented business applications:
    • I hate object-relational impedance mismatch.
    • I don't like to convert data between persistent database and runtime objects for every transaction. How about creating united database/computation engine instead to:
      • Eliminate constant moving and converting of data between 2 systems.
      • Abstract away difference between RAM VS persistent storage. Let the system decide at runtime which data to keep in what kind of memory.

2 Inspiration

2.1 Brain

  • Appears to have more than 3D dimensional design. Food for thought…)
  • From there come following ideas:
    • Maybe every problem can be translated to geometry (use any shapes and as many dimensions as you need). Solution(s) to such problems would then appear as relatively simple search/comparison/lookup results. As a bonus, such geometrical *data storage* AND *computation* can be naturally made in *parallel* and *distributed*. That's what neurons in the brain appear to be doing ! :) . Learning means building/updating the model (the hard part). Question answering is making (relatively simple) lookups (geometrical queries) against the model.
    • Mapping of hyperspace to traditional object-oriented programming model:
      • Object is a point in space (universe). Each object member variable translates to its own dimension. That is: if class declares 4 variables for an object, then corresponding object can be stored as a single point inside 4 dimensional space. Variable values translate to point coordinates in space. That is: Integer, floating point number and even boolean and string can be translated to linear value that can be used as a coordinate along particular dimension.
      • Each class declares its own space (universe). All class instances (objects) are points inside that particular universe. References between objects of different types are hyperlinks (portals) between different universes.

3 Current status

  • More or less defined Vision / goal.
  • Collected some ideas.
  • Implemented very simple persistent key-value map.
    • Long term goal is to use it as a backing storage engine and implement more advanced features on top of this.

4 See also

Interesting or competing projects with good ideas: