RE: [xml-dev] XML Technologies: Progress via Simplification or Complexification?

["Hunsberger, Peter" <Peter.Hunsberger@STJUDE.ORG>]

Roger L. Costello  <costello@mitre.org > writes:

<snip>discussion on simplification and complexity</snip>
 
 >  Perhaps for some things progress must come about by adding more
complexity.  I don't know.  What do you think?   

I think there is a third aspect to this that confounds the issue:
abstraction.  One could spend large amounts of time arguing whether
abstraction simplifies or complexifies things, I suspect one must
conclude it does both simultaneously?  

My prime example is our system; as we continue to identify common
underlying abstractions our code and schema become simpler and simpler.
However, as things become more and more abstract they become harder and
harder to understand, the basic context gets lost and one needs a new
level of metadata -- from what was originally embedded in the code and
schema -- to understand what is going on. One ends up looking for ways
to tie your schema and code abstractions back to formal models: which
perhaps brings us nicely full circle back to the KR/OWL/Triplets
permathread...