[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Caution using XML Schema backward- or forward-compatibilit
> 2. Using information items for purposes other than their > original intent is usually a very bad idea. It just provides > a short-term fix and a long term pain (for providers and > consumers alike - vocabulary owner and vocabulary user.). This is the conventional wisdom and on one level one can't disagree with it. However, it ignores the fact that the shift in meaning can be gradual (hence the term "semantic drift"), and that the shift can occur in the "real world" rather than just in the IT system. In a company I worked for we had a code called "location code" which over a period of about ten years gradually shifted from representing a physical location to representing an organisational unit. In this situation no-one knows what the original intent was: was it intended that the concept of "location" should be tied to actual geography, or was it a more abstract idea from the beginning? Michael Kay http://www.saxonica.com/
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