Need

Current Feasability

How VOS helps

Downsides or missing bits

See also

Secure access to remote data. Avoid copying sensitive data on removable media or laptops.

Partly implemented, need encrypted protocol.

Remote access to data by multiple users is the main purpose of VOS. VOS provides flexible user authentication and fine-grained access control for each vobject (the basic unit of data storage in VOS).

VOS does not yet offer encryption of the network protocol. We may also change the design of the access control system soon (to make it better). Offline work (without live internet connection) not yet implemented. Network latency always present.

Multi-user editing without copying files

VOS does this well, but there are no easy to use user tools.

This is one of the main purposes of VOS. Data exists only once, as a Vobject on its home site, and users can change it remotely. Unlike files, versions cannot diverge and data can be accessed from anywhere. Access control policies on the Vobject can control who has access to objects and validate changes. Each revision can be archived for later comparisons or rollbacks.

No easy to use end-user tools. No way to merge or resolve two edits, i.e. the second edit command to arrive supercedes the previous (though revision control backing will remember the previous). Since editing would be "live", then it is subject to current network latency.

Information or software sharing and integration between more than one organization

An essential concept of VOS is interlinking and sharing of data objects accros networks. This allows different sites to be maintained and hosted by different organizations, but with data tightly integrated between them. The data objects remain flexible and changeable. But self-hosting (rather than by one organization, or a seperate party) allows organizations to ensure their own security and reliablility, as well as accessibilty beyond the lifetime of the collaboration or lifetime of any one participating organization.

Keep a number of sites seperate, due to network connectivity, policy, etc., but also need to periodically synchronize data.

Site replication and versioning (and merging) is planned for one of the next major versions, and is in development.

A logical site can be replicated to different hosts (computers), and changes can be made (resulting in two different versions), and later merged.

Core implementation and design is still ongoing, no user tools yet.

Make a web front end to display or access a back end data system.

Possible, may require some programming.

Use the hypervos extension, which can construct and serve web pages from vobjects.

May need to write some code that updates the objects used by hypervos based on the back end objects (to restructure and filter them into the appropriate web view). No good GUI user editing tools for hypervos yet. No CGI/form processing support in hypervos yet.

HyperVosDoc, HyperVosIdeas