Monday, November 12, 2012

Policies

In the conventional file system world, file systems treat all files like black boxes and almost never perform any direct manipulation of files. If any file is created, modified, moved, or deleted it is done as a direct command from either the operating system or an application. All file management functions such as organization, backup, synchronization, or cleanup are performed by something other than the file system itself.

In the Didget system, many of these management tasks can also be performed by the Didget Manager independent of another running program. Programs can schedule specific tasks to execute at specific times or when certain events occur with the use of Policy Didgets. These Didgets are somewhat similar to database triggers. They can cause the Didget Manager to manipulate data even while the application that scheduled the task is no longer available to the system.

Just like all the other Didgets in the system, Policy Didgets can be created, protected, queried, synchronized, and deleted. They can have tags attached to them to help in finding or organizing different policies. They can have a data stream that contains specific instructions or program extensions or that logs results as the policy executes. Just about any conceivable data management function could be implemented or at least facilitated using these special Didgets.

For example, an application could create a policy that automatically adds any new photos with a .event.Vacation tag to a List Didget called "Vacation Photo Album". At the same time it could search for another list Didget with a name matching the tag value (e.g. if .event.Vacation = "Hawaii" then it would look for a list where .didget.Name = "Hawaii Photo Album") and either add it to the existing list or create a new list if it did not exist and then add it.

In another example, an application could create a policy that would automatically backup all new or modified Private Didgets to a chamber located in the cloud every Monday morning. This would create an incremental backup of everything the user created on that system during the week.

In yet another example, an application could create a policy that automatically synchronized all new photos and documents with a chamber located on a phone every time the phone was connected to the desktop.

Policy Didgets could be built and maintained to enforce company policies governing data protection, retention, and validation. Entire workflow systems could be driven by carefully crafted Policy Didgets by having data created, tagged, and organized as each step in the workflow progresses.

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