[sldev] [META][AWG]log chat of AWG meeting Friday, Oct 5, 2007

[dirk husemann]

Argent Stonecutter wrote:
> On 11-Oct-2007, at 00:19, dirk husemann wrote:
>
[...]
>> if i change a property of an asset in
>> my inventory that should go back directly to the asset server of that
>> object.
>
> Even ignoring an asset that exists in multiple inventories, you can
> have an asset twice in your inventory with different permissions. You
> can't copy assets every time you make a copy in your inventory or even
> every time you give someone a copy, there's no point, you only need to
> copy the properties and leave a reference to the original. The copy in
> your inventory doesn't even need to exist on any asset server until it
> gets rezzed into a region domain. Then it shows up as a reference on
> that domain's asset server pointing to the data on the original
> server. You're wearing that copy, it's in your inventory, but it's a
> reference to the original until you create a new asset.
see, i'm assuming that assets don't exist in inventories, but rather
that an inventory has a reference to an asset "living" in an
inventory/asset server somewhere. that asset server can be one of my own
choosing. whether i can store objects that i acquire in a particular
asset server depends on how trusted that asset server is. not my
(architectural) concern here. i could even have different
inventory/asset servers.

if i change a property of an asset, that should go back to my
inventory/asset server --- i don't want to be tied to a particular PC or
mobile phone or toaster storing my inventory, that should be in the
network; in the morning my toaster might be my secondlife client, an
hour later i'm accessing the grid from my business laptop, and so on.

if we assume an asset to consist of meta data ("properties") and a
reference to the data (current asset UUID, if i understand things
correctly), then giving a copy to someone should make a new copy: the
meta data part changes, the reference to the asset server might remain
the same --- the other avatar might want to take that copy into its own
asset server, though. if i rezz something that should create a new copy
as well to decouple it from the inventory object --- otherwise we end up
with an unmanageable tangled web of references with the region domains
having to constantly check whether the representation of an asset has
changed.

-- 
dr dirk husemann, pervasive computing, ibm zurich research lab
--- hud at zurich.ibm.com --- +41 44 724 8573 --- SL: dr scofield