SUO: Suspension of SUO Common Ontology Development Architecture (Coda)
SUO members,
A few months ago (recently, in SUO time :-), Intuit Quickbase changed their
terms of operation. Instead of providing free access to upto 3 databases
with total size less than 2 megabytes, they now provide free access to only
1 database with total size less than 10 kilobytes. For $14.95 per month,
they will provide access to upto 15 databases with upto 2 megabytes per
database and a limit of 15 megabytes total space in all databases.
The SUO Coda database exceeded 10 kb, so access to it has been suspended by
Intuit.
From the discussions that occurred in this thread, it appears to me that
Coda (at least on Quickbase) should be assigned to the "experimental
dustbin", for the following reasons:
1) It did not support (and probably still does not support) mathematical
symbols. This was perhaps the main limitation that I recall as a finding
from Robert Kent's work with it.
2) If it were successful, it could grow beyond the 2 mb per database limit.
3) At present there does not seem to be sufficient motivation for paying
$14.95 per month to continue using it.
4) Alternative approaches were suggested in this thread.
So, unless there is some reason to continue working with Coda, I recommend
and request that we remove references to Coda from the SUO web page, and
develop an alternative approach.
I apologize for not posting this until now, but it does not appear to have
impacted anyone, and I've been very busy with other matters.
Phil Jackson
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Seth Russell [mailto:seth@robustai.net]
> Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 4:32 PM
> To: Philip Jackson; Robert E. Kent
> Cc: SUO
> Subject: Re: Web-based ontology browsers
>
>
> From: "Philip Jackson" <phil.jackson@computer.org>
>
> > > Why don't we use MathML ?
> > > http://www.w3.org/Math/
> > >
> > > I'll bet that QuickBase will support it,
> >
> > Well I just now tried using some sample mathml in a Quickbase
> record... It
> > just displays the mathml code itself, i.e. it doesn't display an
> equation...
> >
> > > if not then I will bet
> > > that Intuit
> > > could be persuaded to add that support to their way cool web service.
> If
> > > not, then i suppose, we can go somewhere else.
> >
> > Maybe they can be persuaded-- I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask
> them about
> > it.... It would be a nice feature for Quickbase in general to be able to
> > have fields that have "HTML" or "MathML" or "XML" data type, where
> Quickbase
> > would provide an appropriate presentation engine for data in such
> fields....
>
> We might end up with too many things on our wish list for Intuit
> to want to
> keep pace. For example I think we need the ability to read and write RDF
> directly into the db. If this ontology is to grow with the help of
> automated tools, we need at least to be compatible with the
> state-of-the-art
> automated tools that are being constructed for these purposes. At the
> same time, it's the data that's important here. Quickbase will
> probably be
> adequate to help us start collecting data. As long as we can get
> the right
> kind of data in and out of Coda, we can always pick it up and put it
> somewhere else. But on the other hand if we dumb down the data
> to adapt to
> Quickbase, we'll need to schedule a lot of busy work for someone down the
> line when we want to show things in all their glory. Unless there's some
> kind of budget for this, maybe we should avoid it.
>
> > > Incidentally who is paying Intuit's bill ?
> >
> > Intuit provides Quickbase for free to the public, for small databases...
> > Once a quickbase gets over a certain size, they charge a
> monthly fee. Viz.
> > https://www.quickbase.com/p/cost.stm The Coda database is still small
> > enough that there isn't any charge for it... If Coda were to reach the
> 2-15
> > megabyte size range, then we'd have to look for a source of
> $15/ month...
>
> Well your current db shows:
>
> Owner/Manager: ieee_suo
> Last modified: Today, 12:34 PM
> Records: 39
> 2% full
>
> ... so, according to my interpretation, that's 2% of 3 meg, yet there's
> almost nothing there. I have this fear that we will exceed the
> max capacity
> of the Premium package, which I take to be 50 meg (~$50/month),
> way before
> this gets interesting.
>
> Seth Russell
>
>