Hello Vonsmith and Padriag,
I agree that these functions would be useful, and that a "true database" would facilitate them.
Robert Medeksza's approach through the years has been to find good, solid, standard modules suitable for Ultra Hal, so that Ultra Hal doesn't get locked-into a bunch of high-maintenance, unique, proprietary components. This looks out for the long-time interest of all us Ultra Hal users. I am sure he is looking at candidate database engines with this approach in mind.
By the way, the file-sizes of the databases are NOT unusually large by contemporary comparisons. Compare Ultra-Hal's largest file of less than 12 megabytes, to photo and video files than can run into the gigabytes!
Rather, it's the way Ultra-Hal uses the files. When Ultra-Hal accesses a database file, he reads the whole thing, and usually "evaluates" every entry, on every conversational exchange! This requires tremendous processing intensity, hence the speed problem. It's like reading every book in the library every time that you want to look up any fact.
In my Auto-Topic-Focus brain, and now in Vonsmith's XTF brain, the topics are pre-separated and labeled by subject, as the Dewey Decimal System does for books. This allows Ultra-Hal to ignore non-fruitful processing, and effectively gain speed. Although this might be considered a temporary workaround until we have a full-blown database structure, it seems to work very well in all the testing I've done so far.
I have read only one posting on this forum in which a computer gave an error message saying "too many files" and I have not been able to reproduce it. When my anti-virus program scans my computer, it reports that I have over 150,000 files on my hard drive, and my computer doesn't seem confused by that at all.
I am very hopeful that our experiences with the Auto-Topic-Focus brains and XTF brains will give us valuable insights into efficient and effective approaches, so that we're extremely well-prepared when (at some point in the future) Robert Medeksza finds a database engine that meets all our requirements.
P. S. Padriag: I've looked all through my e-mails and I have not received an e-mail from you. If you are trying to reach me by e-mail, please try re-sending it.
Best wishes to all,
Don