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RE: What is this principle called: "I' send data in my UOM and

• From: "Len Bullard" <cbullard@hiwaay.net>
• To: "'davep'" <davep@dpawson.co.uk>, <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 09:23:18 -0500

A separate but related challenge is the assumption that the architect's
design informs the originator of the information directly.  For various
tooling and skills reasons, this may not be the case.  A common example is
creating the information in a information poor toolkit such as Word and
emphasizing orthogonal richness such as format which then is
converted/tagged into an information rich structure the architect controls
for some period of time after which dozens of other authorities contribute
to it.  This is the classic up translation problem made more difficult by
the after-original design periods in which alterations are made by sources
not informed as to the original design assumptions.

Several generations later, output of the design artifact (say DTD, schema
and instance) change places.   Templates are substituted as a means of
informing less skilled individuals and these in turn are use cases to
construct processors (say XSL-FOs) potentially without consulting the
original design or designer.  At every generation, that clean design
envisioned by the architect becomes more important to the users of the
artifacts skilled enough to divine that intent because of policy referencing
(say CDRLs).

A simple example is a DTD that specifies attributes as #IMPLIED or CDATA and
twenty years later, an XSL-FO that switches on those values to create format
which is then marked up by persons uninformed or untrained in the
permutations of possible tagging that is according to the governing
reference, perfectly valid but will not trigger the patterns correctly.

We share our incompetence.  This is a challenge to the architect.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: davep [mailto:davep@dpawson.co.uk] 
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2011 2:08 AM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re:  What is this principle called: "I' send data in my
UOM and youconvert it, as needed, to your UOM"?

On 09/10/2011 01:52 AM, Alex Muir wrote:
> This makes me wonder what should an xml architect consider in the
> event that they do not know how various organizations are going to use
> their data?
>
>
Make an assumption that their interpretation will differ from yours
and design a way of testing assumptions made, since these are
generally a source of misinterpretation.



regards

-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk


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• References:
  • Re: What is this principle called: "I' send data in myUOM and youconvert it, as needed, to your UOM"?
    • From: davep <davep@dpawson.co.uk>