Re: [xml-dev] Partyin' like it's 1999

[Eric Hanson <elh@cs.pdx.edu>]

Michael Champion (michaelc.champion@gmail.com) wrote:
>  > -----Original Message-----
>  > From: Eric Hanson [mailto:elh@cs.pdx.edu]
>  > Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 5:02 PM
>  > To: Bullard, Claude L (Len)
>  > Cc: 'Michael Champion'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
>  > Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Partyin' like it's 1999
> 
>  >
>  > 1. There is no way to look up, discover and retrieve the
>  > library of resources that support with a namespace-qualified element.
>  > If you come across a piece of data, there may be hundreds of
>  > supporting resources like XSL transformations, schemas,
>  > xforms, text documentation, etc.  We need a way to link the 
>  > resources to the data.  This is the biggest problem with XML
>  > today.
> 
> I guess it worries me when people say that the problem with XML is
> that it doesn't do ENOUGH. Most of the problems I see stem from trying
> to do too much, too soon, and biting off more before the previous
> mouthful was chewed.
> 
> That's just disagreeing that this is an *XML* problem, not saying that
> it's not a challenge that W3C might want to address or xml-dev argue
> about.  (State it in haiku and we'll be happy to beat any subject to
> death <duck>). 

I'll have to work on that.  :-)

> It seems more within the domain of the meta-architecture of
> the Web that the TAG wrestles with or the classic challenges
> of ontology and epistimology that the semantic web people
> westle with.

Fair enough.

> Also, isn't the challenge of querying a distributed database without a
> central index at the bleeding edge of computer science?  Or would some
> way of leveraging Google (or whatever) to find the location of the
> meta-information work for what you have in mind?

Hey, I just said the *problem* was obvious. :-)

Something less like Google and more like Gnutella would be my
preference, but yeah these are hardly proven concepts.  Ideally
it would be a distributed database, totally open and allowing
anyone to say anything about anything.  Then add some kind of
recommendation system on top of that, so you can quickly find
popular resources when they compete.</handwaving>

I still claim though that the coolest XML apps will make use of
something like this, and that we'll be faced with kludges and
hacks and work arounds approximating something like this until
we figure out how to build it.

Eric