COMMUNICATIVE DATABASES

Yu, 1981

Category: Databases

Overall Rating

3.3/5 (23/35 pts)

This paper offers a unique conceptualization of database interactions centered around explicit "communicative operators" tailored to organizational context.
While its specific hierarchical model and 1981 implementation are outdated and largely superseded by modern database technologies, the core idea of formalizing context-aware communication and interpretation between distinct information sources holds a niche, actionable potential.
Applying the "Channeling" operator's "Interpreter" function to structure communication between heterogeneous modules in areas like complex compositional AI systems could provide a novel architectural pattern for managing information flow and semantic translation.

The core ideas of Basing and Channeling as fundamental database operators... are highly distinct from mainstream database concepts like relational algebra, object-orientation, or graph traversals.
The "interpreter" concept in Channeling, mediating communication between entities with different internal data structures/contexts... have significant unexplored potential for complex, decentralized information systems.
The framework's fundamental units are "working groups" and "contexts," and the operators model information flow between these entities. This abstraction could be highly relevant to modeling and building systems in various domains...
Modern advancements could drastically enhance the feasibility and power of CDMS concepts... AI could be used to implement the "interpreter" function in Channeling, allowing for sophisticated, context-aware data translation, summarization, or filtering between communicating entities.

The model is predicated on a rigidly hierarchical view of organizations (Figures 1.1, 2.1-2.4) that is less representative of modern, more fluid, matrixed, or network-like organizational structures.
It doesn't offer a generalizable, abstract framework for data interrelation and communication applicable across arbitrary organizational structures or data types.
The proposed mechanisms ("basing," "channeling") and their implementation details (PI-stack, custom parsing, page-level operations on a specific system like REL/POL) are complex and tightly coupled to the unique CDMS design.
Current standard database practices and distributed system architectures offer far more general, flexible, scalable, and performant solutions for the problems it attempts to address.

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