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RE: The Prophet of Unintended Consequences

• To: "'Costello,Roger L.'" <costello@m...>, XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: The Prophet of Unintended Consequences
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 15:01:51 -0500

The main value of simulation is the capability 
to evaluate competing hypotheses without incurring losses 
of assets (the danger of using real time orchestration over 
production assets for some kinds of event response). I 
think we agree there.

Returning to the feedback model posed earlier, the abduction 
phase in which one chooses the subjects of interest is hard 
to simulate.  Choosing inadequate datasets is a primary 
cause of failed simulations.  Knowing when one has enough or 
the right data is hard to do.  Waiting to get more data can 
be deadly, and sometimes, more data doesn't improve the 
analysis.  Ask yourself, regards XML Schema design, when 
do I have enough representative document instances to 
accurately model a class of documents? 

Things only get a little better in the 
second phase of induction, but it is precisely this phase 
that spawns multiple hypotheses.  Simulation can be of 
great benefit to the inductive phase as long as the situation 
analysis produced accurate/timely models and the corresponding 
theoretical models account for all of the observables.

In short:  competing multiple hypotheses are a better means. 
Simulations should enable comparisons of real world measurements 
against the predicted results.  If you think about the ways in 
which we design schemas, there are obvious correspondences 
to gathering multiple documents and feeding them to the validator 
while constraining and loosening the type definitions.  Validation 
error logs should be informative to an analysis, not just an 
audit trail.

Also, just because the simulation shows it can work doesn't mean 
it will.  The installed base has to be in place first.  So the 
market cycles of individual integrated technologies must 
be factored into the analysis.  Again, Chertoff quoting from 
the NIMS/NRP on CNN was revealing.  Another problem is 
beggaring a technology by specification yet assuming it is 
a standard for actualized technologies.  GJXML is a stunning 
example of attempting to beggar a technical implementation 
over understanding the installed base.  In both cases, a 
wishlist for outcomes became more important than the real 
time actualized components.  We have no problems committing 
to achieve the goals of these, but making real time decisions 
based on them is wishful thinking at its worst.

len

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