Subject: Re: The database I wish I had

From: Jonas Schürmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2020 11:26:02 +0200

Hello EuAndreh,

I read your blog post with excitement because I'm currently on a very
similar quest. My goal is to bring back application data into the hands
of the users (and onto their devices) to replace centralized,
cloud-based data stores. I wrote down what I wanted in this blog post
[1].

Like you, I didn't find anything that seemed to work like I wanted, so I
decided to start exploring the problem myself. While you go for the
Git-like approach of three-way-merges, I am trying to model conflict
situations with completed categories.

I can't say that I've come very far yet. I realized that properly
modelling conflicts with completed categories is a hard problem and
while I had some progress already, there isn't anything that I would
consider ready to be shared just yet (if you're curious you can look at
the source [2]).

But through discussions on lobste.rs [3] and further research I built a
list of references, prior work and concepts in this space [4]. From your
blog post I even got a few more references that I just added :) Perhaps
this list is also useful for you.

I wish you the best of luck with your endeavor and I hope to see further
posts about your progress on the blog :) When I have more time I will
also write more about what I've found and what's next.

Cordially, Jonas Schürmann

[1] 
https://jonas-schuermann.name/projects/dvcs-for-structured-data/blog/2020-03-22-manifesto.html
[2] 
https://gitlab.com/MazeChaZer/dvcs-for-structured-data/-/blob/master/source-code/EventSourcing.hs
[3] https://lobste.rs/s/qsehiu/i_want_decentralized_version_control_for
[4] 
https://jonas-schuermann.name/projects/dvcs-for-structured-data/notes/references.html

---

From: EuAndreh <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 2020 07:26:47 -0300

> Hello EuAndreh,

Hi there!

> situations with completed categories.

Hmmm, I haven't heard this term before. Are these [0] the complete
categories that you mean?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_category
 
> this list is also useful for you.

Thanks for all the links, I'll try to use them to enrich my
understanding on the subject.

---

From: Jonas Schürmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2020 14:48:35 +0200

> [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_category

Yes, exactly. The idea is pretty abstract and while I know a little bit
about category theory I'm by no means an expert on the subject. This
blog post [1] is a very down-to-earth, practical explanation how the
concept of (co)completed categories can be applied to conflict
representation in version control systems.

[1] https://jneem.github.io/merging/

---

From: EuAndreh <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2020 21:34:51 -0300

> [1] https://jneem.github.io/merging/

This sounds interesting, thanks for the link.