[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: What is coupling? [Was: 3 XML Design Principles]
On Tue, 1 Feb 2005 09:05:53 -0500, Roger L. Costello <costello@m...> wrote: > > Yes, I like that much better than Assignment. Still, I am not quite > > satisfied with Association. It's such a general term. > > Let me try to give a better explanation why I am uncomfortable with both I'm not seeing the point here -- are we discussing XML Design Principles or the semantics of a model about the grape industry? If the former, I think it's clear (to quote Len) that XML Doesn't Care. It's just a way of labeling data, and there are all sorts of possible ways to model and label the relationship between Lot and Picker entities, and the choice of one over another depends on all sorts of things that would be important to someone building this application but we can barely guess at. If it's the latter, let's consult the domain experts on biz.wine.grapes or whatever :-) An XML geek who was actually consulting with a domain expert to build an application might well find it useful to have a repertoire of design *patterns* for this in mind -- an RDF-like explicit model of entities and relationships, a classic XML representation of whatever business document grape farmers use to record the assignment of pickers to lots, a serialization of some RDBMS tables that record this, some XML messages that would be sent to the supervisiors on each lot identifying the pickers they should expect to show up, etc. I can't even begin to believe that one or another of these is better than another in the abstract, and each will look very different from the others. Christopher Alexander ("Mr. Design Patterns") was interviewed on NPR over the weekend. You can listen via http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4469331 He seemed to be saying that one should avoid preconceptions about which patterns will fiit a particular situation. Answering a question about what his 4 volumes of theorizing about "The Nature of Order" means for someone thinking about how to remodel a kitchen, he says: "You'll be beset by images, instructions, notions of what is fashionable. You've got voices speaking in your head about all those things, and. the most important thing you must do is get rid of those voices, really and truly clean them out and only pay attention to whether you are actually feeling better. ... even if the answer surprises you."
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