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Re: Hobbsian processes

• To: XML DEV <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Hobbsian processes
• From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 21:29:25 -0400
• In-reply-to: <3D6584E6.83AEE97C@p...>

8/22/2002 8:42:14 PM, Paul Prescod <paul@p...> wrote:

>
>
>Furthermore, if having a "standardized input" shifts some burden from
>the information consumer to the producer, can you agree that totally
>unstandardized input shifts some burden in the opposite way. After all,
>you've described how you need to maintain logs, write regular
>expressions, and kick exceptions to human processors. It is commonly
>accepted that using a standard vocabulary is a way of meeting in the
>middle. You probably won't have to write totally custom code for it
>because you may have other customers that use the SDV. I probably won't
>have to write totally custom code for it because I may have other
>suppliers that use the SDV.

I agree with Paul's description of the sensible technical solution.

But what if your website or service has dozens or hundreds of producers
of inputs, and they all deal with dozens of consumers of inputs.
Presumably this will happen increasingly as service oriented architectures
(RESTful, SOAPy, P2P-ish, or whatever) become more pervasive.
You have no authority to get the various consumers of messages
to get them to band together and insist on some common schema, and
you have an economic disincentive of some sort to reject 
inputs that don't conform to your idea of a valid message. What 
is to be done?  Well, joining the plumbers union and learning an
honest trade comes to mind <grin> but assuming that you want to 
live in the environment where no one has the authority to impose
an authoritative schema, and there are disincentives to employ
"draconian" measures when imperfect inputs are received, what
do you do?  I suggest that one does the kinds of things that Walter
is talking about.

The RSS situation seems to be a beautiful illustration of what 
the dilemmas that arise in the Real World. First, there's little
agreement what "valid" RSS is. There do seem to be some conventions
on what "broken" RSS might mean, but there's a weblog go-around 
(whatever you call a "thread" in weblogese) centered on Sam Ruby's 
blog concerning the costs/benefits of being liberal 
in accepting broken RSS.  The world 
as a whole would be better off if everyone rejected broken RSS and 
complained to the producers ... but in the meantime very few people
would have any news to read, because (the impression I get anyway) is
that lots of popular news sites emit "broken" RSS.

Is there any reason to think that this won't be repeated many times
over as XML worms its way deeper and deeper into the business
infrastructure?  Do people REALLY think that competitors will band together
to define and enfore standard schemata, when they all have an incentive
to use whatever hacks they can to take business from those who reject
invalid messages that contain sufficient information?

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