[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
- From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>
- To: XML Developers List <xml-dev@xml.org>
- Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 09:00:49 -0500
I think we're saying the same thing. EDI is a tough
challenge for consensus. PDES went on for years
and even where they got consensus on ideas, getting sharable
implementations was much harder.
The point is in exercising the critical functionality that
Goldfarb invented for markup, a validatible agreement for
processes that depend on it. The first level
as you note has been to get a near universal consensus
on that. XML constrained that further by removing
the need to agree on the lexical constraints in
an SGML Declaration. On the other hand, XML introduces
the potential for landgrabs with namespace declarations
and further confused it by not doing a good job
understanding the legal niceties of Formal Public
Identifiers (system independent names for formal
records of authority) and why one should not
put HTTP in front of any formal public name (Not system independent).
Neither Peter nor I are new to this. We are veterans
of the struggles of communities to create such
agreements. In fact, suggestions that EDI could
be markup based were roundly ignored by the EDI
community until the pervasiveness of Internet
infrastructure made it an irresistable bargain.
It is easy to speculate about a "frictionless
economy" or a "semantic web" and these are nice
visions to have. However, if one thinks that just having
the DTD or schema makes such agreements easy to abide by, they
have yet to work with a system that demands the
document be opened to determine which namespaces
it demands support for, who owns them, and if
they resolve to local semantics. XML does NOT
send semantics with the data. Java and XML
can, but not XML alone. It is the first bit. All in all,
yes, markup makes it easier, but it demands
that the humans engage actively and where they
do not, exposes it quickly, and where it fails
to do that, opens the door for cascading catastrophes.
Therefore, one can project that a fitness factor
for organizations to thrive in this environment will be
a capacity for cooperation and negotiation, not
that this has not existed before, but that now
it becomes a primary, testable characteristic. This environment
shapes itself by promoting the success of such
organizations, enabling their propagation and by
doing this, reshapes other aspects of the global
business and social environments. As one member
of the list posted to me, between XML and the web,
third worlders with good skills if poor countries
are seeing a chance to really compete, really better
their own chances, and engage. It is a most
satisfying potential for those who labored a long
time as one writer put it, "in relative obscurity"
to make this chance possible.
Len Bullard
Intergraph Public Safety
clbullar@ingr.com
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/lensongs.ram
Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Allen [mailto:joshuaa@microsoft.com]
I have to disagree just a bit. I think that successful
implementation of EDI took much more consensus among
the parties involved. Of course we all have to agree
on what XSLT is and what XML is, but after that, it is
much easier than ever before to deal with a pragmatic
world where people disagree.
***************************************************************************
This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers.
To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@xml.org&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev
List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
***************************************************************************
|