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Where you at Extreme in Montreal?!?! I wish I had met you. In fact, I
probably did! Let's hope we can meet again "same time next year."
>
> > However, instances of syntax are just "brute facts" -- things in the
> > world. I'm skeptical of the notion that there has to be *a* model.
>
> Agreed. There's a many-to-many mapping between syntax and data models.
> If you define a syntax, it implies you can have many data models for
> information represented in that syntax. If you define the data model,
> it implies you can represent that data model using many syntaxes.
>
> If you define both, then you've got something that can be exchanged
> between different applications in a standard way, and that will be
> processed in the same way by each application.
Well, I think Walter Perry would take a percentage of issue with that.
Let's think of content as oh, say, pig iron. It's great that there are
standards for pig iron, because then you get what you pay for
("exchanged"), the furnaces don't blow up ("processed"). That's what XML
does. But "*will*" be processed is too strong.in the pig
iron business will have a distinctive competence -- that's why they *are*
in business (Walter calls that "local knowledge," I think). That
distinctive competence may well express itself in different ways of
processing pig iron. So for content. In fact, just as there's a place for
verticaly integrated behemoths like US Steel, and for "scrap" producers
like (The extremely profitable) Nucor, there are probably business models
that can be built on refining "bad content" The point is that the
chemistry of pig iron (syntax) is well understood. As for the model --
well, that's kind of advisory as long as the furnace runs, isn't it?
> Interestingly, in his closing keynote at the Extreme conference this
> year [1], Michael Sperberg-McQueen actually spoke about a *trinity* of
> things that were important for a meta-markup language:
>
> - syntax
> - data structure
> - validation
>
> which Wendell, Gavin and I took as a challenge ;)
I was distressed by the valedictory tone. I like to think that the
discussion we are having now proves it wrong. Michael was like Alexander,
sighing for new worlds to conquer...
> Anyway, I'm very glad to see that the talk's made it up onto the
> web...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeni
>
> [1] http://www.idealliance.org/papers/extreme02/html/2002/CMSMcQ02/EML2002CMSMcQ02.html
>
> ---
> Jeni Tennison
> http://www.jenitennison.com/
>
Sam Hunting
eTopicality, Inc.
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