RSS isn’t just a format for syndicating content. It is also an index format. What’s an index format? An index format is a way of listing items that point to other things which may also be indexes or other formats. This is exactly the way RSS is used today, but in a limited, extremely simple way. You subscribe to a RSS feed using a RSS news reader. If you want to see the full contents of any item you go to a URL contained in the GUID RSS element and view a HTML document. This doesn’t have to be a HTML document. It could be another RSS feed or some other document in a different format. Why would this be useful? In business and other complex organizations information is rarely found in linear repositories like weblogs. In many cases, an index is the tip of a long and twisted journey. The content itself is not uniform in format. Much of the information I deal with on a daily basis is locked inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. RSS can handle these types of documents with its enclosure element, but how do I generate a description, assign a GUID, categorize the document, and identify the author? Then there is a completely different set of information I deal with on a daily basis. This information comes in customized technical reports about my data center and reports from my analysts. It is conceivable that a XML format could be created to publish these reports and a RSS news reader plug-in could parse and render these reports. There are two challenges here. One, news readers need to be able to handle recursive feeds. In other words, feeds that refer to other feeds. Second, well defined plug-in architectures need to be available from the news reader manufacturers. Once these two challenges are overcome, RSS will be unleashed to foster new and exciting formats that streamline the delivery of content, information, and data to users.

posted: 11:43:42 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

Cassatt Corporation appears to have a nicely packaged grid platform. However, they do not appear to address issues of running applications on their grid. The exeuctive team is impressive. This is definitely going to be one to watch.

posted: 11:17:35 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()