Freedombase Technical Functionality

Technical functionality - overview

Freedombase mimics Spread of Activation, from the field of Cognitive Psychology.

Spread of Activation is a model of how the mind, and memory works; how the mind 'finds' ideas, concepts or
memories that are related to each other.

Spread of Activation requires three stages:

1. Metadata (learning about the shape of the data itself, including direct relationships)
2. Paths (calculating relationships between indirectly related tables)
3. Retrieval (finding and returning related data from indirectly related tables)

The first stage needs to be completed before Freedombase can be used although Freedombase itself automates
much of this work.

The second and third stages are performed as required by Freedombase on demand.

Freedombase applies Spread of Activation over data held within database tables. Once the Metadata stage is
complete, related data from any number of tables, in any number of linked databases, can be retrieved simply by
specifying the starting table and rows, and listing the required other tables.

This retrieval of related data, from anywhere in any linked database, is then used to provide further, enhance
functionality.