The network is a database
Résumé
Past development of the Internet shows that its evolution is powered by technology but mostly driven by applications. As a consequence, it is of utmost importance to carefully monitor the driving forces enforced by applications and services to forecast some possible futures for the current Internet. We support, with some examples, the claim that the network is going to provide a service similar as the one provided by a (Distributed) Database, thus, enabling an efficient "Publish and Subscribe" (PubSub) service model. The search activity will provide a mean for competition and architecture for participation where various types of content can be disseminated at different scales. In this paper, we first support our claim with a simple review of the relevant state of the art illustrated from areas such as Information Retrieval (IR), Information Filtering (IF) and Content-based Networking (CBN), to highlight similar concerns and contributions. The problem space being very broad, we then formalize the problem in order to emphasize the main challenges to be addressed and provide a preliminary insight into potential solutions. One original contribution of this work is to take advantage of the large information en route in the network to support the PubSub service. The design and evaluation of this architecture being in progress, we conclude the paper with a list of important open issues to address.