Re: Internal/External questions - scribed from f2f 1

Internal and external are just relative terms,
but they have clear distinctions.

It's related to What and How.
Or Our Business vs My Business.

In a contract between two parties,
all of the commitments in the contract
are external (shared or agreed common knowledge),
whereas how each fulfills their commitments
is internal.

However, how each fulfills their commitments
may involve other conversations with other parties
which become external in a different context.

In a Web resource, 
the URI and GETtable representations are external,
whereas how the representations are generated
is internal.

But how the representations are generated
may GET representations from other resources.

So yes the external contract will constrain
the internal implementation, but do you really
want to bind them tightly together or
leave them loosely coupled 
so implementations may change
without effecting external contracts?

-Bob Haugen

Received on Wednesday, 19 March 2003 07:16:20 UTC