On Jun 10, 2005, at 6/10/05 11:04 AM, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> When gardening, one doesn't 'let a thousand flowers bloom'.
> One prunes relentlessly and daily.
Alas, I suspect that what we're involved in here is more like
forestry than horticulture. And after all, having each specialist
community tend its own garden is pretty much what led to
interoperability problems in the first place.
Instead of serving one particular constituency, we're trying to
address issues at a higher level of abstraction, one that bridges a
number of specialties. As with any attempt at global optimization,
it's unavoidable that the results will be slightly suboptimal for
each individual user. So I think we may want to be careful about
carrying efficiency arguments too far... we're rarely going to find a
single take on efficiency that every stakeholder shares.
Also, I think we need to consider what our role should be. Are we
proposers and presenters of standards, or just repackagers of other
folks' work? Putting that another way, is a pre-existing standard
always better just because it came first? If not, how much weight
does precedent deserve?
Further, I think we need to guard against turning XML into a next-
generation stovepipe by moving application logic into messaging data
structures. Some XML folk, in particular, seem to prefer doing every
possible bit of processing in the parser. That's understandable, but
might that path lead us toward petrification as loosely coupled and
flexible web services get trapped in a dense matrix of hyper-
specified data structures?
Finally, I'll call for a committment to humility on everyone's part.
What we're trying to do here, in terms of cutting across disciplinary
and organizational boundaries, hasn't been done before. There are no
real experts... we're all explorers. If we let ourselves become
personally attached to particular theories, techniques or precedents,
this whole undertaking could bog down in exactly the sort of
factionalism some skeptics have predicted.
The question, IMHO, isn't what's "right"... we really don't know
that, even though each of us may have strongly-held theories. The
question for now is what we can put together that will serve as a
productive platform for further exploration and learning. And it's
in that spirit that I urge we keep our structures as simple as
possible, on the theory that it'll be easier to add specificity later
than it will be to back out of premature choices.
In short, let's not let our ideas of the Best become the enemies of
the Good.
- Art
