Re: [xml-dev] Transformative Programming: Flow-based, functional,and mor

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 10/18/13 12:09 PM, David Lee wrote:
> Try calling up Google and asking them if only they would change their
> Map API it would be so much easier.
And asking them to join a committee to define a schema for their API is 
easy?

> Try calling up "The FDA" and asking if they would perhaps accept a
> vendor specific change to HL7 ...
Giant bureaucracies gonna bureaucrat.  For centuries paper has been 
capable of more than forms, and yet...

> Try even calling up your business partner at "Corporation X" and
> asking for the "IT Department" and seeing if they might please
> change a field in the data they are sending you to something more
> reasonable.
Note that I'm not describing this as a negotiation.  If they're sending
you something, you get to decide how to deal with it.  If the phone call
would help, you're welcome to try, but if they say no it's up to you to 
cope - just as it always was.

> Try telling your contracted business partner that already agreed to
> a fixed price implementation that you want to send a different
> variant of the data and would they please process it and send a
> "wafer thin" change back to you, without renegotiating a new rate.
Again, I'm not suggesting negotiation.  However, I have actually done 
pretty much just that in the past and found people more willing to make 
"wafer thin" changes than you apparently expect.

> For *me* schemas help solve the problem of *inherent inability* to
> communicate over time, space, organization and contractual boundaries
> that *preexist*.  It makes life easier for everyone involved where
> otherwise it would be literally impossible to communicate.
Now _that_ is hyperbole.  It's a miracle that we ever communicated 
before schemas!

I don't expect users and developers the world over to throw off their 
schema carapaces immediately.  I do hope they will notice that these 
things are itchy, uncomfortable, limiting, and not nearly so necessary 
as we've been taught.

Thanks,
--
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/