Re: [xml-dev] Caught napping!

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

W. E. Perry wrote:

> This is that the data
> instance as originally created has some content and that content is
> understood by its creator to exhibit certain properties. Some portion of
> that same content may (and I argue, will) be understood,


But how are these processes to acquire that understanding?
If it is hard-coded into them, then they break when the creator
changes.

> The understanding, which is to say the elaboration of particular semantics
> from the data, comes directly from the operation of the process.


This sort of reminds me of the lawyer's maxim that "the law is what
the judge says".  Useful for lawyers, but of no help to judges --
who are sworn to judge according to the law.

Your processes have to acquire their understanding from somewhere,
just as people have to acquire their understanding of their native
language.  Let's say that you are a process which is going to
receive medical records from a patient-record system, and your
purpose is to evaluate success rates against diagnoses: how
many patients with cancer are cured, how many with heart
disease, and so on.  You get documents something like this:

<z7xuren>
   <q8uwf9em>John Cowan</q8uwf9em>
   <buwower6>455.55</buwower6>
   <vjslas.werwr>120/86</vjslas.werwr>
   <jbu2nj3>NaN</jbu2nj3>
   <e2jv8b0wpkemvikwhasdf>22.245</e2jv8b0wpkemvikwhasdf>
   <b7gj>36.2</b7gj>
   [...]
   <yh7vj2kj>1</yh7vj2kj>
</z7xuren>

What *general* approach would you take to finding out what
you need to know?

> That is
> why only a process can determine the semantics of particular data *in the
> outcome of the operation of that process, on that occasion and in those
> particular circumstances*.


What hope does the process have of learning that the yhvj2kj element
means (i.e. has the semantics) "years free of disease" unless this is
specified somewhere?

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