[QUANTITY]: gather requirements for quantity model

[Patrick Dowler]

On Tuesday 28 October 2003 10:16, Brian Thomas wrote:
> 	Ok, I thought that last night there is already alot of traffic
> on the dm mailing list,
> 	and gathering requirements may make it worse. So I  whipped up a
> quick set
> 	of webpages for capturing requirements for the quantity data
> model, located at:
>
> 		http://nvo.gsfc.nasa.gov/QuantityRequirements

In my opinion, this is exactly what we already did over the summer and the
requirements, design issues, etc are all nicely buried in the mail archives
of the dm mailing list. Maybe I'm a total heretic, but it is not necessary and 
often a waste of time dojng the full RS, CD, DD process for something which 
can be deduced from basic principles. 

This is NOT a difficult problem as long as we refrain from redefining the 
words of the the english language willy-nilly, ie the word Quantity. It has a
fairly well focused and accepted meaning in the world of computer science 
and we would be fools to stray from the actual meaning of the word. I totally
disagree with those who say that the words aren't important and we should 
concentrate on the concepts. It is only by chosing the right words that we 
can communicate effectively; otherwise we tend to mislead and misunderstand
others.

So, this is my call to NOT waste time specifying requirements and redefining 
the word quantity to mean something it doesn't. 

-- 
Patrick Dowler
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