RE: APIs, messaging

[Al Snell <alaric@alaric-snell.com>]

On Wed, 23 May 2001, Jeff Lowery wrote:

[...]
> > live pig that knows how to butcher itself, along with a list 
> > of the appropriate messages needed to 
> > initiate the process.

Put it this way, the pig industry works around a common specification of a
pig; the buyers know how to butcher such a pig. A cube of pork couldn't be
accepted as a pig without the buyers conferring with the producers to find
out if the entire cube is edible, or if it's got bones in and all
that; then a new procedure for that kind of vat-grown subpig could be
developed, and all would be fine.

Everything depends upon standards. I am hearing people say that you don't
need standards with XML because if something not matching what your
software expects comes along, a human can figure it out. Great. We still
need mutually agreed standards, or we can't communicate. Full stop... XML
doesn't change a thing!

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software