John Bottoms wrote:
<rant>The more I see of W3C architectures, the more it
looks like an intentionally arthritic skeleton, designed to prevent usefully
flexible designs.
I am beginning to think it is time for an web system designed by
scientists, not programmers.</rant>
Good luck with that! My experience with
scientists writing specs for implementation by programmers shows that they don’t
have a clue what is needed to make a rigorously effective web site.
Scientists should stick to science while
programmers should stick to programming. Putting someone in charge who knows
nothing of the realities of a working site always ends with disaster.
There is a need, however, for IT trained
business people to define what exactly the basic needs are for. Scientists always
seem to think they know the answers to things that surprise them in the end.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Bottoms
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2014
1:39 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]
fitness of XML for ontology (WAS: [ontology-summit] The tools are not the
problem (yet))
Duane,
Please see my comments below. -John Bottoms
On 2/3/2014 3:27 PM, Duane Nickull wrote:
inline:
On 2014-02-03 12:15 PM, "John F Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2/3/2014 12:55 PM, Duane Nickull wrote:
XMl has nothing to do with semantics.
XML has the ability to make data portable and can be used to transfer
ontological or semantic models, or fragments thereof, between
applications.
I agree with both of those points.
JSON notation (or the very similar LISP notation) could have been
adopted by the W3C for exactly the same purposes, but without the bloat
or excessive coding. LISP, for example, has a built-in parser that
requires only two operators: CAR and CDR. (AKA head and tail.)
The W3C has recently adopted a methodology whereby they will define a
technology (like RDF), then define bindings using various syntaxes like
JSN or XML. This is the proper way to architect interchange formats IMO
as they are developed from a good model.
Duane Nickull
Yes, I do understand that is what W3C is doing. And no, I'm not sure is the right thing to do.
Stacks essentially trace their beginnings back to Dijkstra's "THE
multiprogramming system (Technische
Hogeschool Eindhoven)".
"The constraint that higher layers can
only depend on lower layers was imposed by the designers in order to make
reasoning about the system (using quasi-formal methods) more tractable, and also to
facilitate building and testing the system incrementally.
(THE multiprogramming system wikipedia
entry)
[if you are interested his PhD thesis is at: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/PhDthesis/PhDthesis.PDF]
The important kernel of the layer system, which ultimately
became the ISO standard for communications, is that messages are passed between
layers and layers do not "dip into" other layers structures. The only
place I have seen exceptions to this is in tunneling, in communications, where
priority or time take precedence. When binding between layers takes place you
are effectively gluing the layers together and that removes a critical open
architecture feature; namely the ability for any other component to talk to
that interface. IP solve this problem by having a field that specifies who
(which protocol) the message should be sent to. This way the forwarder can send
the message to TCP, Telnet or DLSw.
The W3C approach can be followed but if it is a static
one-to-one binding then we will lose the flexibility that has been developed
for so many years. Further, the binding requires compatible updates between the
layers or something will get broken when the layer specifications are updated.
The IP approach allowed for the addition of new numeric values without changes
to the protocols or layers when protocols were modified or new ones added. All
the protocols have standard numeric values that are kept in tables so the
forwarders can operate across many different protocols. Notice that this design
contains no bindings. All forwarding is dynamically determined.
<rant>The more I see of W3C architectures, the more it
looks like an intentionally arthritic skeleton, designed to prevent usefully
flexible designs.
I am beginning to think it is time for an web system designed by
scientists, not programmers.</rant>
-John Bottoms
FirstStar Systems
Concord,
MA USA
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