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RE: XML Technologies: Progress via Simplification or Co mplexi

• To: 'Rick Marshall' <rjm@z...>
• Subject: RE: XML Technologies: Progress via Simplification or Co mplexification?
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 09:58:52 -0500
• Cc: "'bob@w...'" <bob@w...>, "'Roger L. Costello'" <costello@m...>, xml-dev@l...

And in completely open systems, it happens instantaneously.

A fully-open system is an oxymoron.   A system is defined 
by its boundaries.  It is sustained by its ports.  The 
energy is highest (think profit) and the evolution potential 
is highest in the overlaps with other systems (ecotones). 
That is also where it is most unstable if the ecotone has 
multiple owners (the recipe for chaos is an input/output 
box with multiple uncoordinated controls).  

What the effect of open blogging will 
be on corporations that engage in it is an interesting 
question.  The difference in outcomes may be dramatic 
even for companies that start with just a few differences 
in the vital culture.  The chooser of choices (high 
level controls and filters) can make the difference.  
(I only see Sun blogs through the lens of Tim Bray, etc.).

One really wants certain components to come from a small 
group or ideally, one.  There actually is a difference 
between a standard component and a commodity because 
while time and space may be the same thing, things in 
time and space aren't.

A completely closed system exhausts energy as heat. 
A well-designed system exhausts waste that it cannot 
recycle.   Between the completely closed system (there 
aren't any) and the completely open system (there 
aren't any) are degrees of design and lengths of 
lifecycle.  A well-designed system accomplishes a 
mission and is then refreshed.  There are aircraft 
that have lived much longer than their designers 
and builders because they were designed for upgrades. 

And that is very important to anyone building a business 
over a complex system design in an open box.  XML is just 
the latest in a series of markup technologies built over 
simple concepts that accommodate complexity or simplicity 
at different stages in the evolution of systems designed 
to use them.  XML can be simpler or more complex but the 
core concepts have been stable since the 1960s.  It is 
the environment that has changed dramatically.

len


From: Rick Marshall [mailto:rjm@z...]

while we're talking entropy, don't forget the most important aspect of 
it. in a closed system it increases over time. i think this is 
overlooked too much. (the reason time is an arrow, not a bidrectional line).

this, put simply, means that all our designs will start to break down 
over time unless we have a maintenance cycle. and in our maturing 
industry, as you have observed re ibm, the companies that get this right 
will be the winners. the technologies that get this right will be the 
winners.

so as the entropy of xml increases where is the energy coming from to 
maintain order in the process, or is it as some suspect, out of control? 
will xml survive the fragmentation forces?

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