Networked PIM Using PDMS

Personal information management (Pim) is a promising new type of application allowing not only to search a desktop, but to pose complex, structured queries against the data on ones computer. We propose to remove the confines of Pim and make selected data available to a network of peers using peer data management system (Pdms) technology. The result is an application for collaborative information management within workgroups. To achieve this vision, several participating tools and technologies must be adapted: Pim systems must be augmented with privacy concepts to protect non-public data, which in turn must be interpreted by the Pdms query rewriting mechanisms. The entity resolution methods of individual Pim systems must be extended across multiple Pim systems with possibly heterogeneous schemata and must support ad-hoc queries. Finally, traditional Pdms are designed to find the complete and correct query result. In a networked Pim application it is not necessary to find all results to a query and it is acceptable to respond with inexact results. 1 Personal information management