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Abstraction vs Scaling (Was: Native XML Interfaces)
- From: cbullard@hiwaay.net
- To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
- Date: Sat, 01 Jun 2013 11:23:19 -0500
Lauren writes: "although HyTime to XLink didn't quite pan out."
Dan Connoly wrote some years ago that the problem of SGML on the Web
was it wouldn't scale. Some interesting evidence lately encountered.
1. XLink is still widely used in IETM standards.
2. HyTime archforms are still referenced and implemented in some IETM
applications.
XLink may not have fared well on the web but it was drawn into the
applications where its parent was adopted and still survives like a
coelacanth in the deep dark waters where only the toughest creatures
live. Ironic?
Scale matters to the web. In other applications it is not scale but
precision of naming and identitying (because no, they aren't the same
thing) matters. This is where Kurt has a point: relating information
as a graph and organizing it into a tree that makes it easier for the
human to consume are distinctly different problems. Organizing an
application to scale and making it fast and precise are distinctly
different problems. REST is a bridge but that and only that. Beneath
the abstractions that make the standard referentially tight is simply
a network emailing state.
At one point in its evolution, design, whatever, it was in the
Goldilocks zone: about the right set of concepts for the best
scaling. Then it became more abstract, it baked too long before being
implemented widely enough to figure out what the next version should
be and how much and what should be taken away. DOM thrived longer
because at the time of the launch there was a social.technical need
with lots of customers. Timing is everything in standards.
Lesson learned: abstraction and scaling are not necessarily allies.
What a programmer wants and what an author can do aren't allies unless
they are required by treaty to be so. This is why the slow stumbling
work of standards committees go on. Peace and prosperity.
len
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