[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill de hÓra [mailto:bill.dehora@propylon.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 6:14 AM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Partyin' like it's 1999
>
> Ronald Bourret wrote:
> > Yes. I've seen it in at least one other organization as
> well. My point
> > is that it hasn't crossed schema boundaries and become universal in
> > the way people thought it might. (There might very well be a good
> > reason for this. For example, given the potential complexity of
> > addresses, somebody designing for a local market might be making a
> > very good design decision to ignore all that complexity and simply
> > encode the address schema that fits their locale.)
>
> I see two issues to consider beyond the usual interop
> concerns; dependency management
Dependency management - a perfect job for an XML Registry (wearing OASIS/ebXML Registry TC member hat).
Kind Regards,
Joseph Chiusano
Booz Allen Hamilton
Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World
> and engineering cost.
>
> Mapping XML content models can represent significant work, yet it's
> often desirable to reduce outside dependencies. Many groups don't
> reuse schemata because they're wary of being broken by
> another spec outside their control. For example, the Atom
> effort has a large percentage of elements that could be taken
> from other specs such as dublin core - the consensus
> nonetheless has been to retain control of the spec through
> re-invention.
>
> Normally the focus is solely on interop, but it's a mistake
> to ignore the costs of supporting generic formats. When you
> do decide to reuse, some uber-content standards* can be so
> generic and are trying to cover off so much ground you risk
> overspend and system robustness in simply being conformant.
> Which is to say the interop/implementation costs can be high
> enough to constitute overengineering and can put systems and
> projects at risk. The agile folks call this design
> speculation "speculative generality". The ideal approach
> seems to be profile for the target locale, which may imply
> some level of governance or architectural support.
>
> So, it's not just that reuse and interop are good, but that
> there are dependency risks to consider plus the engineering
> cost of all those SHOULDs and MAYs add up. This is why for
> example, architectural policy in Propylon has always been to
> make transformation cheap as possible rather than hold
> unjustified expectations about standard models and format reuse.
>
> Having said that, where I am seeing reuse working in is the
> Irish eGov scenario Sean is involved with (some of the RIGS
> have popped up here recently). The essence there is to to
> profile existing standards and ensure the architecture
> supports those who would use standards. Sean might have a
> more nuanced view on this, but it seems to me without astute
> profiling, good IT governance, and architectural support for
> standards, format/schema reuse is fraught.
>
> cheers
> Bill
>
> * such as xAL, WXS (or even ISO8601)
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org
> <http://www.xml.org>, an initiative of OASIS
> <http://www.oasis-open.org>
>
> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
> manager: <http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/index.php>
>
>
|
