Getting Started with Fluidinfo

Chapter 9. Conventions for the About Tag

Fluidinfo guarantees that about tags (fluiddb/about) are unique and unchanging. These properties make the about tag an ideal identifier. Other tags attached to an object with a given about tag are clearly and unambiguously associated with whatever the about tag specifies. It is, however, important to understand that Fluidinfo ascribes no meaning to about tags or objects; there is no reference mapping between about tags and real-world objects, and there are no rules—only conventions—about which objects should be used to store data in Fluidinfo.

If your data is self-contained, in the sense that it is not combined with or dependent on any other user’s tags, it does not matter very much which objects you use, though it would be perverse and somewhat antisocial to “pollute” objects having an about tag with data that does not pertain to it. As a general principle, if you are not choosing objects on the basis of their about tag, there is a strong case for using objects that have no about tag.

As we will see, for anyone who does wish to combine data with that from other Fluidinfo users, there are strong benefits from adopting conventions for tags, particularly about tags, and these benefits increase as more users adopt the same conventions.

A Book Example

Consider the case of a set of users who wish to share data on books. They have a number of choices. If there is a recognized leading or reference user who is going to take responsibility for trying ...