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Bill de hÓra wrote: > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...] > > > > Intermediaries have a chance of understanding the wrappers. > > We don't seem to write many intermediaries which have a > > chance of understanding the contents, but that hardly means > > it isn't possible, especially as the costs of processing > > continue to drop. > > Such intermediaries are fully possible and do exist. Cheaper > processing is being amortized by XML data structures though. An intermediary can deal with the data exactly to the extent that it understands the message. Barring AI, the intermediary understands the message to the extent that the data's syntax and semantics are known in advance to the intermediary, or at least the data can be mapped to something with semantics the intermediary understands. Teaching every intermediary about every bit of data in the world is not cost effective. Therefore the obvious solution is standardization. We need to make standards for the syntax and structure of the message. Most messages consist of a request to send Data D to Process P or to get Data named D from Process P. Therefore it makes sense to standardize the method of naming processes (thus we have URIs) and the method of saying "please get information" and "please send information". Thus we have HTTP. Of course you can build intermediaries with more detailed knowledge of the structure of data D. But we can never completely standardize D because some people need to send love letters and some people need to send purchase orders. So we use XML for D because it is equally adept at both. Now given that we can't completely standardize D, IMHO we should at least standardize what we can: the addressing model and the way of saying whether you are trying to send information or get information. Paul Prescod
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