I've been playing with Redland and its librdf recently. I'm looking for a fast replacement for Medusa's database. I'm not sure what to think. It has some new parser and query features since I played with it last year. From a storage aspect, it can do what Medusa does now, but I think I'll need more query capabilities. If I must write a query engine, there no reason it must be Medusa's so long as it works well.

I strongly feel that a GNOME metadata solution should be based on metadata standards: RDF, OWL, FOAF and use common grammars. I'm shopping for a new Medusa backend because I don't think Medusa should be in the DB business, and it needs an extensible schema. It would be nice to have a ready to go RDF DB to attach the search and indexer pieces to. I think Storage is the long term solution, but if I can get a solid db that follows stands now, I can solve scale and feature later.

The Good

• standard compliant: plays with other tools nicely
• proven: has been seen to play with others
• LGPL: is allowed to play with others
• Few dependencies: doesn't hassle others
• small: is not a burden on others
• bindings: plays with everyone

The bad

• BDB 4: will everything break when BDB 5 comes out
• Mysql: a bit of a nuisance to setup for single users
• query: applications and users need robust searching
• scalability: will this work at 100 megs, the size of my Medusa db