[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: Inheritance in XML (was Re: Problems parsing XML)

• From: Lisa Rein <lisarein@f...>
• To: Frank Manola <fmanola@o...>
• Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 09:33:08 -0700

I agree that, in the future, hopefully, these will all become 
semantic issues (said with tear welling in eye).

lisa rein

Frank Manola wrote:
> 
> At 8:55 PM -0700 4/16/98, Tim Bray wrote:
> >At 10:35 PM 14/04/98 -0500, len bullard wrote:
> >>> [Chris Maden <crism@o...>:]
> >>> > One fundamental flaw in _XML Complete_ is Holzner's apparent belief
> >>> > that you must write Java code in order to do anything useful with
> >>> > XML.
> >
> >>Markup doesn't care.  That's the beauty of it. :-
> >
> >Yes! What he said.  As a result of having been a programmer since
> >A.D. 1979, my faith in interoperable APIs is torn and shredded.
> >But I think that interoperable syntax is usefully achievable.
> >Hence, XML. -T.
> >
> 
> and Matthew Gertner wrote:
> >Eliot Kimber indicated some scepticism as to whether OO techniques have
> >really lived up to their hype. In terms of a controlled environment, they
> >have. Any C programmer who has moved onto C++ will attest that OO features
> >make it far easier to write extensible and maintainable code. On the other
> >hand, the promise that this would lead to interchangeable components that
> >could be used anywhere has clearly been a flop. Why? For exactly the reason
> >Tim mentioned in his mail: interoperable APIs never work. You can't
> >interface with code and expect this interface to apply to any environment
> >other than the one it was specifically designed for. This is the case
> >whatever technology you are using (DLLs, Java, JavaBeans, Smalltalk, COM,
> >CORBA, etc.). Hence XML.
> 
> These observations about the (at least so far) lack of success with truly
> interoperable APIs are certainly true, and the potential of interoperable
> syntax "feels" right, but I wonder to what extent we may be comparing
> apples and oranges here.  Specifically, what do we mean by "interoperable"?
> Interoperable APIs are hard at least in part because an incredible amount
> of semantics are (implicitly) built into a typical API (as is suggested by
> Matthew's comment).  Moreover, interoperable APIs are held to a "strict
> accountability":  the programs interacting through them must work without
> either syntactic or semantic errors (and, with programs, these are
> typically all bundled up).  However, if programs must agree on the precise
> meanings of tagged data in order to guarantee proper operation when
> exchanging data (and what else does a fair understanding of "interoperable"
> mean in this context?), won't the semantics that must be mutually
> understood be (approximately) just as complex?  And don't we then need to
> consider the mechanism(s) for achieving *that* in our comparisons?  After
> all, it's not enough that the programs be "interoperable" in the sense that
> they can each "operate" (e.g., read, parse, or even approximately get the
> meaing) on the other's data;  the operation must also be "correct" in a
> fairly constrained sense.  I have in mind all the problems large companies
> are having merging data from different databases into data warehouses due
> to sometimes subtle differences in semantics (e.g,, of what a "customer"
> is), even when the data item names (corresponding to markup) are the same
> (or, at least, fairly regular).  I'm not, here, arguing *against* the idea
> of interoperable syntax, but I am questioning how easy it will really be to
> get the degree of "interoperability" we seem to be implicitly expecting.
> 
> --Frank
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Frank Manola                            www:    http://www.objs.com
> Object Services and Consulting, Inc.    email:  fmanola@o...
> 151 Tremont Street #22R                 voice:  617 426 9287
> Boston, MA  02111
> 
> xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i...
> Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
> To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
> (un)subscribe xml-dev
> To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
> subscribe xml-dev-digest
> List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i...
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)

• References:
  • Re: Inheritance in XML (was Re: Problems parsing XML)
    • From: Frank Manola <fmanola@o...>

• Prev by Date: Re: Inheritance in XML (was Re: Problems parsing XML)
• Next by Date: Character streams vs. Byte Streams
• Previous by thread: Re: Inheritance in XML (was Re: Problems parsing XML)
• Next by thread: Re: Inheritance in XML (was Re: Problems parsing XML)
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread