Re: [xml-dev] Caught napping!

["W. E. Perry" <wperry@fiduciary.com>]

John Cowan wrote:

> You are ignoring my concrete example.  How would you *in general* program an
> interpreter of diagnosis vs. cure based on the medical record with obfuscated field
> names that I posted?

I respectfully note that it is you ignoring my larger point. There is no indication,
other than your expectation, that my process is intended to, or capable of,
interpreting diagnosis vs. cure, and certainly no indication that, if it does, it will
do so in the way you expect or based on data in the form that you supply. You
effectively expect to issue a procedure call to my process. Your question is how do I
expect to carry out your intent without an a priori understanding of it. But suppose
that my process is intended to count the number of patient records exhibiting what,
through its own devices, it recognizes as a personal name, such as your <q8uwf9em>John
Cowan</q8uwf9em>? Or what if it is intended to process only records with such names
which it can successfully look up in a third-party insurance fraud database that you
know nothing of? Or to correlate the instances of appearances of your
<e2jv8b0wpkemvikwhasdf> element against instances of matching numerical content in a
check-clearance database which, again, you know nothing of? All of these are useful
work which my process might perform on some portion of your data, though in disregard
of your expectation. The point is that while my process is dependent on some aspects
or properties of the data you supply, you do not know which those might be. More
importantly, my process is autonomous in respect of your intent. A significant benefit
of the textual nature of XML is that being bound to carry out your expectations is not
the price I must pay to share in some use of your data.

Respectfully,

Walter Perry