I've spent the last 3.5 years building a platform for "information applications". The key observation which prompted this was that hierarchical file systems didn't work well for organising information within an organisation.
However, hierarchy itself is still incredibly valuable. People think in terms of hierarchies - it's just that they think in terms of multiple hierarchies and an item will almost always belong in more than one place in those hierarchies.
If you allow users to describe items in the way which makes sense to them, and then search and browse by any of the terms they've used, then you've eliminated almost all the frustrations of a file system. In my experience of working with people building complex information applications, you need:
* deep hierarchy for classifying things
* shallow hierarchy for noting relationships (eg "parent company")
* multi-values for every single field
* controlled values (in our case by linking to other items wherever possible)
Unfortunately, none of this stuff is done well by existing database systems. Which was annoying, because I had to write an object store.
However, hierarchy itself is still incredibly valuable. People think in terms of hierarchies - it's just that they think in terms of multiple hierarchies and an item will almost always belong in more than one place in those hierarchies.
If you allow users to describe items in the way which makes sense to them, and then search and browse by any of the terms they've used, then you've eliminated almost all the frustrations of a file system. In my experience of working with people building complex information applications, you need:
Unfortunately, none of this stuff is done well by existing database systems. Which was annoying, because I had to write an object store.