W. Kandinsky, White Oval, 1919.

Universal Database

If someone wants to store on the computer all of his information like: phone book, ads that he was interested in, quotes from the books or periodicals, drawings (directions how to get somewhere), lecture notes(could be in different languages) and so on. This information the person wants to be easily avaible, searchable, extendable.

Avaible

The human being consumes a vast amount of information. He remember a lot, and he forgets a lot. So you store all the information, you think it is valuable, you end up with a huge database of very different pieces of information. But because of the nature of the information, phone book, notes, directions, you want to get access very quickly, and easily navigate though the database.

Searchable

In order to be very accessible the information should be searchable. And the search engine should take in account that we have graphical information in the database as well as text.

Extendable

Because we use the database to work with different types of information, we've got to add easily new types of data to work with.

We should make an universal database. This database system should be object-oriented database instead of relational database. So we can define such object as computer files, directories, programming projects. For computer files and directories the system will be a file manager, PVCS, search engine, and navigation tool. For programming projects the database will be a programming environment so we can plug-in other programming tools to work on the objects(files in the programming project). Everything will be stored in place. Everything will be searched using one interface, one query language(SQL probably).

Because of the wide diversity of the stored information, each entity in the database should be self-describing in that way we could performautomated operations on all simular entries. That's where maybe XML and XQL can come into play. And we possibly could use WebDAV (version control system for the web). For example, we could have for every entry a field - catagory just like it is made in Sharp organizer application. They use this field to narrow the search and view operations.

Questions

Can it be using off-shell database management system?

I know only one thing that can display text, graphics, hyperlinks.

I am talking about an internet browser using HTML. But if we use HTML files as an interface to the user how can he enter the data to the system? How can it be searched? How will the data be presented in the database?

How can I implement software programming dictionary(SPD) in MS-Access?

I can define a table of atomic blocks (classes, functions?) and another table for more sophisticated blocks which are built on the basis of atoms. Is a class an atom object? Is a function? How properly the tables could be designed? How can I mix it up with OOA and OOD or Z? And how can I automate the transfer from OOA/OOD to the source code using prepared pieces from SPD. We are talking not only on new software creation but also on software maintaince. How can we put the testing in the picture? Can we talk about software testing environment integrated in the Software Environment(SE)? And why can not the SE use both OOA/OOD and Z? It can use a modified version of OOA/OOD which includes Z. AW Brown wrote:"there is the need to ensure that the information availble at one representation is both internally correct and fully described in the next representation ..." I have not seen a lot of theories about it. Is it related to categories theory? How to handle the different versions of the