Getting Metadata from the Semantic Desktop

In my last post, I discussed the metadata infrastructure that underpins the Macintosh desktop environment. In addition, thanks to some handholding from Chris Gutteridge, I've just configured the builtin Web server to download the documents themselves or metadata about those documents (in RDF, generated dynamically from the mdls command).

I've now got a pseudo repository on the desktop that contains all the source versions of my PowerPoint and Office documents, together with metadata about them. There are visualisation, search and editing services provided by the desktop and a Web dissemination system cobbled on the side.

I've also got a real repository on a server that contains the source and preprocessed versions of my Powerpoint documents, together with some metadata about them. There are visualisation, search and (planned) editing services provided by the repository's Web dissemination system.

Can these two work efficiently together, so that the conjunction of the desktop and the repository are greater than the sum of the components? Or is this just an exercise in reinventing the wheel just to make a point? I hope the former...