*Everything* is tagged data. Why didn’t I see that **before** I spent an hour designing the schema for an address book the old way? I realized — in the bathroom, as usual — that I need to be creating the _meanings_ of certain tags in my system rather than doing it the old-fashioned way.
So instead of a _Name_ class with attributes _first_, _middle_, and _last_, why not simply tag Jake (my first name) ‘firstname’, and my middle initial M ‘middleinitial’? I can then define the meaning of these special tags in the system, and allow it to handle data tagged with that information differently. Hmm…
This part would really be transparent to the user - the interface should automatically add these special tags when dealing with structured data like address and phone number. When entering custom tags and descriptive keywords, such a system could really shine; the same method I use to layer meaning onto ’street’ as a tag, for example, can be used later to layer meaning onto ‘Dad.’
Neat!
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