Apps Messaging - Semantics of a Message

[Alasdair Allan]

Mark Taylor wrote:
> However, we're probably not going to progress further on this by
> continuing to argue about it.   Some people in the debate are more
> concerned with how the data model underlying messaging is formulated
> (with a view to permitting various different implementation profiles
> as needs arise in the future), and others are more focussed on
> sorting out the nuts and bolts of what an application has to do
> in order to participate in a messaging...

I'd agree with Mark here, we're obviously arguing from very different  
perspectives. I'm far more interested in getting something simple  
that will work tomorrow, and can if needed be extended next week,  
that some beautifully top-down designed architecture that won't  
arrive till next year.

> *If* we go down the route of revolution (scrapping PLASTIC as it  
> stands
> and replacing it with something which can do similar things but which
> may have advantages such as more flexibility and securer theoretical
> underpinnings)

I'll put my hand in the air now to say that I think this would be a  
bad thing. There is a bunch of stuff wrong with PLASTIC, but none of  
that is bad enough to throw it away. I think the success of PLASTIC  
was driven by the fact that, at least from the application developers  
perspective, it was amazingly simple to implement and get you  
application talking to other people's applications without having to  
get the other people in question to do anything at all. Even poorly  
behaving PLASTIC applications (some behave deliberately poorly for  
various reasons, but leaving those aside) at least present some level  
of functionality to the user.

> rather than evolution (incremental modifications of
> the existing PLASTIC standard to allow it to do new things where new
> capabilities are required), then I am happy that this is done along
> lines similar to those that Mike and Doug are advocating, although
> there are still matters of detail to address.

Agreed.

Al.