the three-services model

hal@finney.org hal@finney.org
Sun, 18 Feb 2001 16:58:25 -0800


Wei writes:
> The three services model doesn't preclude additional services like
> keyword-based searching, but clearly for a general purpose storage system,
> persistent and secure naming is a key requirement.

But perhaps a *friendly* name is not a requirement.  Freenet has
considered a scheme where files would be described by metadata.
The metadata for a file would be a short list of attribute-value pairs
for things like title, author, publication date, keywords, etc.  You would
search using these fields, and then get back a content hash.

MojoNation works much the same way.  You search on metadata and get back
a content hash like the one I showed earlier.

These systems suggest that item (1) in the three service model may be
modified by having metadata in place of a friendly name.

You could also imagine systems which allow direct searches of the text
of documents (similar to what we have on the web with search engines)
and return a content hash key.  These would have neither friendly names
nor metadata.

Hal