Where will my data be in 5 years time? (Part 3)

Why bother thinking about the data?

Why not think about the applications you will be using?

The reason I want to consider the data is that the data is the important part, I’ll explain why.

An application is a representation of data. Different applications reflect different things about the data. Different applications also allow the data to be manipulated in different ways. This, of course, requires the data to be available to the applications, but also to be stored in a format that the application can understand.

My primary example of this is the humble JPG image file. I have a digital camera the creates JPG files. Once I’ve created the image on the camera I copy it to one of the PC’s in the house. having got it to a place where it is available to the applications I use a whole array of applications to do things with the data:

• If I want to send it to someone I use Outlook, compose an e-mail, and attach the picture. At the point Outlook asks me if I want to send the image in any one of an array of sizes. I don’t have to use one application to resize it and another to send it. I can do it all in one.
• If I want to view the images in a slideshow I seem to have lots of choices. My preference is to use the capabilities that are included within the software that Canon make available with the camera.
• If I want to manipulate the picture I have another set of choices.
• I can also add the picture to other documents.
• I might also post it to flickr where they will present it in a number of sizes.

In other words, the data is not dependent upon the application for it’s existence, but the application is dependent upon the data.

What most of these applications have in common is that they are expecting the data to be available on a file service, and they are expecting it to be a specific format.

The one application that is different is flickr. Flickr doesn’t expect the data to be on a file service. It expects the data to be copied to it’s data store before it can be used by that application. Once available within the flickr data store the flickr platform does a reasonable job of making it available to other web applications, but these are all extension to the flickr application.

If I wanted to use a different application to flickr (that did a similar thing) I would need to reload the data. The new application might provide some form of migration or move capability, but I’ve not seen any examples of it yet.

So what’s the result? the result is that I keep a copy of all of my pictures on local hard disks so that if I wanted to shut of flickr I still have my data. I’m not yet in a position where I am happy having any of my data locked into an online service. It’s fine as an application which has its own copy of the data, but it’s not going to become the owner of my data.

And that is one of the problems with Web 2.0 applications.