MesQuilla

My kind of application needs a database

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been focused on killing some backend database bugs in Thunderbird that seemed to have popped up recently – including bugs 471682, 472446, and 471130. I’ve still got more database-related issues that I want to see solved before TB3. I am determined to make sure that the message database in Mozilla Mailnews is robust and reliable – which has not always been a priority in the past.

Maybe this would be a good time to say why I care.

There’s a class of applications that I want to pursue, that are probably best described as variations on the personal information manager theme. Right now I see two possible directions, which are distinct in my mind but have a lot of possible overlap. I come at this as a refugee from Ecco, as someone who has never quite figured out how to get organized in life once the world went toward internet-based communication (primarily email), and tools like Ecco did not manage to keep up. There was a time when I was an organized person, with Ecco at the hub. I’d like to get there again.

My first possible direction is the easiest to explain – it’s a contact manager similar to ACT, Goldmine, or SugarCRM. The main goal would be to integrate all of the many ways that we now interact with each other into a centralized application, where you could manage your activities to develop and maintain personal relationships in a deliberate manner. I’d like to be able to see all of the public communications that someone makes – blogs, chat, newsgroups, web-based systems like bugmail etc. – along with any personal communications that we have, to more easily develop and nurture a wide net of relationships. I’ve been calling this application by the codename Stalker.

The second direction is more vague, but is focused on managing personal visions, goals, projects, and tasks. I’ve been inspired in the past by both the high-level life views presented by for example Steve Covey’s books, as well as the more practical approach in the Getting Things Done direction. I can envision an application that allows you to manage your life’s direction at all levels, from the high-level view of personal vision and goals, drilling down into projects, and ultimately resulting in the nitty-gritty of the minute-by-minute work required to actually move things forward.

There are existing applications that do both of these things. But my experience has been that they ultimately fail because of the problem of information fragmentation. There are just too many little buckets where we keep information about our tasks and contacts. When you have to start spending lots of time to keep all of these information formats aligned with each other, then the focus breaks down, and the systems become impossible to maintain.

That’s where the Mozilla platform comes in. So much of our life’s activities are now focused on internet-based activities. Any application that hopes to manage these needs to be, first and foremost, an outstanding client for internet-based interactions. So why not start with the email and web application, and add on to it the personal information management piece? As the Mozilla platform continues to migrate toward Javascript as the primary programming language, then virtually everything that you would want from a personal information management application can be done as an extension to the core Mozilla applications. You get an excellent web browser and email client as the base – and then add the information management on top.

And that’s where the database comes in. Personal information management will rely on robust database technology. This will be particularly true when you take the next step, and make the project and contact information shareable by a group – which is where you need to go particularly if you hope to ever earn income from it. I want to have a seat at the table when the direction of the database on the platform is discussed and developed, because it is critical to my vision of where I would like to see some new applications.