As a tech geek with experience on similar projects, and a newbie in Solid, I’ve a question for those of you who have more experience with it.
How does Solid handle the reusability of user data?
Think of a scenario like this: I use Solidbook (a social network) for years as an application and at some point I decide to leave it and switch to a competitor product: Solidgram (another social network) but I wan’t to use all those (or a subset) data I created using Solidbook for years.
Is there anything in the specification that allows such a “change of application provider”? If so, how does Solibook can mark that specific data created through the platform so that Solidgram knows which subset of the data user might want to give access to? (and even ask to)
How about the “connections” I created through Solidbook in addition to posts and images etc? How about the access controls I put in place for those connections with regards to access to my data? (IE not to let your grandpa see your last holiday photos in his summer house!) How about the comments (that actually belong to someone else and even might have its own set of access controls, like not letting your ex see those) on my data?
Or are those simply just gonna become something I can only see through a “solid data browser” and cannot reuse automatically?
The key to this interoperability is the desire for applications to store the data they create using Linked Data which is a form of data which also describes it’s meaning, such as a blog post, a telephone number, a business, person etc along with their properties.
So if Solidbook stores data in your “pod” like that, Solidgram can be given permission by you to access it, and use it as is without the need to convert it from one proprietary format to another.
That’s one of the key ideas behind Solid, with the aim of separating data from the applications and services which create and use it.
@ante You may also be interested in the draft interoperability specification that is being worked on within the Solid interoperability panel. Many of the questions you’re asking are being addressed there.
I had a chance to go through some part of those documentations. @joshdcollins , wouldn’t that require and “open ended” sort of categorization of data? sth like “socialmedia/personal/post” via “socialmedia/business/post” for instance? Are we to use the “registeredType” under the Data Registration for such purposes? Is there a global catalog we can utilize (and offer new types) for such purposes?