PM> The server must provide the subscription service. It must also
PM> consult a table of subscribers every time a document is changed.
PM> I think it would be interesting if the table could be more complex
PM> than a simple list of subscribers. Each subscriber could register
PM> not just a document, but also a specific type of VRML object or
PM> scene structure pattern that the subscriber was interested in.
PM> This would allow the publisher (server) to prefilter the
PM> information before sending it along to the browser, which would
PM> help reduce network traffic.
Yes. This is simply a multi-user distributed database. Luckily,
people have been thinking about multi-user distributed databases for
some time. It would be a good idea for us to become at least
superficially familiar with the problems and types of existing
solutions.
PM> Forgy, Charles L., "Rete: A Fast Algorithm for the Many Pattern/
PM> Many Object Pattern Matching Problem", in
PM> _Artificial_Intellgence_ vol. 19 (1982), pp. 17-37.
Is this available online anywhere?