James Fee notes that Swivel originally had a data api. (What follows was originally a comment I submitted to James' post but his MT installation appears to be having trouble.)
The API issue is interesting. I've also encouraged Swivel to provide an API and I'm sure they are going to release something very cool in this area. However, the more one thinks about it, the more the convergence of ideas leads me to the notion of the Data Web. This is an environment in which the data is distributed, discoverable, described and linked just as the text data of documents is now. One would have a data browser and a service like Swivel would be more of an aggregator/search engine rather than a data repository. Rather than data tools exposed through current browsing technology, there would be a data browser.
Note that I'm not talking about the semantic web here. I'll try to get my thinking together and provide a deeper dive on the Data Web soon. For now, this is also appropriate.
Boy, what a way to wake up. My MySQL install needed "repairs". It looks like it is working now, but my heart skipped a beat because I hadn't backed it up in about a month. Doh!
Posted by: James Fee | December 07, 2006 at 09:39 AM
is this a non-readable, non-browsable web? kinda like an underlying, xml-like exchange of data and data and more data?
Posted by: visnu | December 08, 2006 at 02:19 PM
non-readable = non-human-readable..
Posted by: visnu | December 08, 2006 at 02:19 PM
The Data Web you describe sounds a lot like MAYA's Information Commons (http://www.maya.com/infocommons). It's a better approach than the Semantic Web because the latter requires webserver uptime. In addition to distributed, discoverable, and described, data should be fluid and available.
Posted by: Mike | December 11, 2006 at 01:03 AM