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RE: Symbol Grounding and Running Code: Is XML Really E xtensi

• To: 'james anderson' <james.anderson@s...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Symbol Grounding and Running Code: Is XML Really E xtensible?
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:14:44 -0500

From: james anderson [mailto:james.anderson@s...]

>i suggest that, when you decide to warrant a product, you would not do so 
>on the basis of the name of the programming language in which it is 
>implemented.

Yes.  One warrants it meet requirements such as you suggest, reliability 
of performance.  A typical requirement is 99% or better uptime.  There 
are many more usually grounded in adherence to data types, validation 
rules, and so on.  So for each of these, some proof is required and 
these are tested prior to acceptance of large systems.  In the case 
for buying or downloading small code implementations, I would expect 
the warranty to be different but composable.  That might be a reason 
to consider RDF as a warranty language.  Exotic, but we are inventing 
the future here, not capturing the past.

>you would also likely consider your knowledge of 
>the supplier, their performance and claims. perhaps even their 
>supplier. 

Usually that is done when soliciting bids.  Yes, their supplier 
enters into it.  In the market I am working in today, that 
is a requirement for MS systems 99.99% of the RFPs.  But the 
facts are, we have to pass the EULA to our customer as a result 
with a very limited warranty on certain system components.  I 
think the industry can do better.  Public systems should have 
higher reliability requirements as 50 million American and 
Canadian citizens might agree with this particular morning. 

>you would also likely consider  the intended use. would you 
>not?

Certainly.  That is an issue for aggregating the warranty where 
systems are built up from components.  The logistics professionals 
deal with that sort of buy every day.

>thus, i would expect at least that at least this degree of 
>expressiveness be available to the descriptions of entries in your ip 
>registry.

A code registry would be a means to quickly find vetted code that 
met the warranty and ip requirements.  We can think of that overall 
as indemnification, but that word covers a lot of different warranty 
types and one would need a way to compose the overall numbers 
efficiently.  That is why RDF descriptions come to mind.  It seems 
to me to be a very compelling use case for the semantic web.

>just as the name of the programming language is not sufficient, neither 
>is the name for the set of universal names, nor is the name of a schema 
>sufficient. it is necessary to name a concrete, rather than a generic, 
>combination.

Right.  The namespace is the identifier for the generic object to 
be supported.  Associated by identification are all of the pieces 
you are asking for.  In other words, one does not want to lose the 
XML because regardless of its 'lack of semantics', semantics are 
associated to it; they are just currently badly defined and warranted, 
but the lifecycle properties and the ubiquity for 'bits on the wire' 
applications are good.  This isn't an attempt to hang all the 
indemnity risks on XML; this is an exploration of how XML and 
other emerging languages such as RDF could be worked together 
to get a machine processable warranty system.  This might become 
part of web services.  Likely.  However, it will require the 
standards authors to write tighter standards including in some 
cases, behavioral object models, and it will require the 
implementors to pass the conformance and compliance tests 
before they are able to use a namespace identifier that 
associates with that standard.   I would not expect this 
for all languages and applications.  As you say, intended 
use is evaluated.  But I think that such a system once 
in place and practiced, would quickly be adopted by more 
than a few organizations.

>this search space is not flatland and the name of the namespace of the 
>gi of the root element will not get you there.

It is a place to start.  Marrying XML application language 
descriptions to object models, insisting on conformance 
and compliance testing for implementations that claim 
by namespace assignment to conform to these, registering 
these claims, and insisting on warranties will get you there. 

Will this cost more?  Yes.  Will this slow down 'the fast 
Internet world', one can only hope.  

"Wings without eyes make for unheedy haste." - Midsummer Nights Dream -
Willy The Shake

len

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