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RE: filesystems

• To: 'Didier PH Martin' <martind@n...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: filesystems
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 11:05:57 -0500

Consider that notion in terms of the inversion of 
functionality to scale in sign systems.

1.  The web is a coarse operating system which 
shares a very simple set of verbs (REST), a 
single addressing syntax (URI) and a pervasive 
but not ubiquitous metalanguage (XML).

2.  Local systems (say desktops) can be much 
richer with more verbs, more address syntaxes, 
and a multitude of application languages.  
The can be aggregated into larger units, say 
LANs, but not to the scale of the WAN.  We can 
drop lower into applications themselves which 
can contain multiple implementation languages, 
but which become inefficient doing that, so 
the scaling isn't isomorphic until they resolve 
into say a runtime code (see C#).

The sign system/inverse functionality 
determines the power of the operating system 
and also the scale at which it operates.

The same is so of any system that is based 
on communications to achieve interoperation. 
This is so of natural ecologies as well. 
At most, humans at the largest scale share 
gestures (smiles are smiles in any human 
culture even if intents and results vary 
by context: the referent problem).  In smaller 
scales, they have rich and domain specific 
languages.

I've termed those information ecologies to 
enable a metaphor that includes an energy 
budget and a lifecycle.  Coarse operating 
system is another way to look at that in 
the specific context of computer networks. 
You are saying that the web architecture 
is an operating system at a coarse scale.
One needs more than XML but XML fills out 
the data and application language slots 
given implementation languages.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Didier PH Martin [mailto:martind@n...]

In conclusion, if we were to speak about the XML framework as an XML based
operating system, we would say:
- OS have always pet or preferred languages, it that case we can say its
XSLT. And XSLT as today as a privileged way to get data XPath. In the next
version Xpath and Xquery but not SOAP. Thus cannot yet obtain data from
services nor even trigger a service from an XSLT document.
- OS have APIs to call for services or get data. In that case we can say
that SOAP seems to be the privileged API with a silver spoon in the mouth
(raised by very rich parents :-). This latter is used to call services.
XQuery and Xpath used to get data (or infosets).

You know, maybe the XML framework is slowly becoming an XML OS.

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