[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The Rise of Worse is Better
Kiurt, I can empathyse, but what's up with ACCORD or Origo or Polaris. Aren't these insurance industry standards that could provide you with a head start both on semantics as well as syntax, and tolling and run-times ? And if you need some more generalised information items, UBL, et al Fraser On 29/08/2012, Kurt Cagle <kurt.cagle@gmail.com> wrote: > Roger, > > First - I wanted to say again how much a pleasure it was to finally meet > you at Balisage. I only regret that I was not able to stay for the full > conference. > > There is an old cantrip to the effect that Perfection is the Enemy of the > Good. It is used to justify a great number of sins in programming as > elsewhere, and I'd argue that while there is benefit to this position, > there's also a point where Mediocrity is just as much the enemy of the > Good, and in many respects far more dangerous. > > I can give a good example of this from my own work. I am working on, among > other things, trying to develop an ontology for data interchange in a > Federal insurance program. It is a project that suffers from vendoritis - > the project is time constrained, and the vendors and primary contractors on > the project, eager to start billing hours, started programming long before > requirements were fleshed out, before data models were even understood, and > before larger stage planning had fully been accomplished. This meant that a > lot of schemas were surfaced that consisted primarily of attributes taken > out of a relational database table or a screen-scraped form and thrown into > a flat XML structure. Given that there were dozens of participants in this > particular process, each of which had a need to talk to one another (but > that weren't doing it just yet), what eventually emerged were dozens of > different approaches to handle the same process. As a consequence, much of > the code that has been written to date built around a web services > framework now suffers from Babel syndrome, and XSLT transformations are put > into overtime work to try to keep communication going just between two > parties. Because of performance issues, fully 2/3 of this code will likely > have to be thrown out. > > I've been pushing to get a NIEM based standard in place, but it's been a > real uphill slog, not least of which because NIEM itself is a complex > schema that Java developers especially tend to dislike because they have to > cross namespaces, which adds complexity to their JAXB code. So why NIEM? > Partially because it does a reasonably good job (once you understand what > you're doing) in modeling a lot of the core objects that this kind of > application tends to have, it establishes a formal discipline on naming > conditions and rules that multiple distributed partners can work with, and > it has a known development and distribution process. It's also something > that other Federal agencies are moving towards for the kind of people > management exercise found in this project. > > So in many respects the worse is not better than "good". The more integral > a piece of software is to a system, the more that flawed code, poor design > and interface decisions, and a lack of consideration for broader > architecture will impact upon the ecosystem that evolves around that > product. In an ecosystem starved for alternatives, the "poor" might > actually gain some traction because the alternative is the "none" but any > more, the ecosystem is generally far from starved. There is a case for not > trying to go to perfection, of course - business requirements change, which > in turn force changes into technical specifications, so perfectly tailored > solutions will eventually get out of sync, but I think its a case where > what you should be striving for is flexibility and balance - sacrificing > more development time and perhaps some performance in order to make a > component sufficiently flexible to meet the business needs for a longer > period of time, and hence allow for a some redundancy in the system. > > Kurt Cagle > Invited Expert, XForms Working Group, W3C > Managing Editor, XMLToday.org > kurt.cagle@gmail.com > 443-837-8725 > > > > > On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 7:13 AM, Costello, Roger L. > <costello@mitre.org>wrote: > >> Folks, Hello, >> >> I just read an interesting article titled, The Rise of Worse is Better. >> >> The lesson to be learned from this is that it is often undesirable >> to go for the right thing first. It is better to get half of the >> right >> thing available so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are >> hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of the right thing. >> >> I think this lesson applies to XML as well. Rather than developing a data >> model (e.g., XML Schema) that tries to do everything, create a simple >> data >> model that spreads like a virus and then take the time to improve it. >> >> More ... http://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html >> >> Thoughts? >> >> /Roger >> >> _______________________________________________________________________ >> >> XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS >> to support XML implementation and development. To minimize >> spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. >> >> [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ >> Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org >> subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org >> List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ >> List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php >> >> >
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