Apps Messaging - Semantics of a Message
Mark Taylor
m.b.taylor at bristol.ac.uk
Wed Apr 11 02:22:31 PDT 2007
On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Doug Tody wrote:
> It seems to me that we are still defining a standard service model
> for each type of data, but just doing it in an adhoc fashion, by
> defining operations at random as they need arises (which is, alas,
> the way a lot of software is designed).
there are times when ad hoc design is bad news, but I don't see this
as one of them. In PLASTIC, defining messages for specific
messaging/data-sharing requirements as they arise has worked quite
well.
The idea of agreeing up front on a structured hierarchical vocabulary
of mtypes intended to cover most or all semantic requirements
does not fill me with joy; it is likely to require a lot of work to
achieve agreement, will inevitably be incomplete, and will
probably contain a large number of messages which never get used.
I would much prefer to agree on a small number of mtypes which
we know we need, and augment the list on an ad hoc basis as
indicated by emerging specific requirements of applications
which need to do particular jobs.
Mark
--
Mark Taylor Astronomical Programmer Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/
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