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On Tue, 1 Feb 2005 09:05:53 -0500, Roger L. Costello <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
> > Yes, I like that much better than Assignment. Still, I am not quite
> > satisfied with Association. It's such a general term.
>
> Let me try to give a better explanation why I am uncomfortable with both
I'm not seeing the point here -- are we discussing XML Design
Principles or the semantics of a model about the grape industry? If
the former, I think it's clear (to quote Len) that XML Doesn't Care.
It's just a way of labeling data, and there are all sorts of possible
ways to model and label the relationship between Lot and Picker
entities, and the choice of one over another depends on all sorts of
things that would be important to someone building this application
but we can barely guess at. If it's the latter, let's consult the
domain experts on biz.wine.grapes or whatever :-)
An XML geek who was actually consulting with a domain expert to build
an application might well find it useful to have a repertoire of
design *patterns* for this in mind -- an RDF-like explicit model of
entities and relationships, a classic XML representation of whatever
business document grape farmers use to record the assignment of
pickers to lots, a serialization of some RDBMS tables that record
this, some XML messages that would be sent to the supervisiors on each
lot identifying the pickers they should expect to show up, etc. I
can't even begin to believe that one or another of these is better
than another in the abstract, and each will look very different from
the others.
Christopher Alexander ("Mr. Design Patterns") was interviewed on NPR
over the weekend. You can listen via
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4469331 He
seemed to be saying that one should avoid preconceptions about which
patterns will fiit a particular situation. Answering a question about
what his 4 volumes of theorizing about "The Nature of Order" means for
someone thinking about how to remodel a kitchen, he says: "You'll be
beset by images, instructions, notions of what is fashionable. You've
got voices speaking in your head about all those things, and. the most
important thing you must do is get rid of those voices, really and
truly clean them out and only pay attention to whether you are
actually feeling better. ... even if the answer surprises you."
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