Re: ??? (was RE: A simple guy with a simple problem)

["Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@home.com>]

Simon St.Laurent wrote -

>
> It's not all a competition....  Most people and projects don't care about
> each other, remember.
>
Well, you HAVE to care in a web environment, because either you want someone
else to get and use your stuff, or you want to use theirs.

One thing that really worked for http/html is that you only needed to know
generic stuff, not highly detailed things.  For example, you need a browser,
but the other person doesn't have to negotiate with you about how the browser
is going to display your table.  So you only have to care a "little" about the
other parties involved.

If the web is going to extend to more capabilities but along similar lines,
you want people to be able to agree on other general-level things, like
transformations or data types or authentication, and not have to negotiate
detailed specifics each time.

Contrast this with the use of asn.1, where you normally have to use a specific
schema for a specific message type to construct specific data structures so
you can process a message.  You exchange a schema somehow, or make a set of
classees and exchange them, then you do your business.  You do it fast and
efficiently, but you have to negotiate at a level of greatly detailed
specifics.

Clearly, xml-schemas can and will be used like that.  One hopes that they can
be used in the more generic manner, too.

Cheers,

Tom P