First of all, thanks for kicking this off, Eric. The documentation you've produced already is fantastic in its granularity and comprehensiveness, and it should produce a great application. I'm excited to be involved in these discussions. And now to the questions at hand... > Is XML necessary? Is it overkill? I would say XML is probably overkill here, or at least premature. Creating a data structure that can be imported/exported as XML is an absolute necessity, but implementing the tool around an XML datastore would be much more slow and onerous than just using a plain-ol' SQL database. It seems to me that what we need is a solid specification which can be turned into SQL and then fronted to users as HTML through a content-management system, and also "fed out" as whatever XML format (if any) emerges as a standard in the Academic community. Ditto for importing content as standards emerge. Basically, my core feeling is that building applications around XML- based data storage is not the way to go. XML formats make fantastic glue to connect disparate systems, but the utility and ubiquity of SQL for a web-application's local datastore is undeniable. > Is there any existing open source content management system that is > well suited for the listed requirements? I'm completely confidant that Drupal can swing this application. It's really a database application framework with content-management and a user/access system built in. There's a very flexible and mature system for taxonomy and data-type specifications, as well as good tools for controlling workflows, adding ratings and comments, and the sorts of social-networking functions we want to see. I have a bias here as Drupal is my expertise, but it's a growing community of 1000s of active developers and 100s of 1000s of sites, and it's a great way to rapidly prototype, refine and launch community web applications. It's built on LAMP so the skills to mod are widely held and the TCO is low, and even though it doesn't look like a million dollars out of the box, a skilled theme-maker can give it a keen glossy shine. Plus the upcoming version 5.0 includes all sorts of AJAX goodies and tools for building cutting-edge "Web 2.0" user interfaces. http://www.drupal.org Anyway, as I said I have a bias, but I don't think it's an unfounded or ill advised one. I'd be happy to answer any questions folks might have. > (4) Are there other standards that should investigated related to > the data format for the storage of the patent application or metadata? Again, I think the important thing here is to get the data specification right and implement that through a good SQL database structure. In terms of what data to store, it seems to make sense to look at work that's going on in the scientific community, but from what I can see there's no clear standard. But that's not a big problem. In the open world, formats are fungible; I think for this work functionality comes first. Ok! Looking forward to what's next! cheers -josh Josh Koenig, Partner josh at chapterthreellc.com 1-888-822-4273
