RE: Reducing complexity

Why I'm allowing myself to be sucked into this rather than writing material
for the arch doc, I'll never know.

wrongo on the complexity.  If soap 1.1 had been followed with using just
HTTP POST, then the former would have been as simple.  By supporting GET, it
now makes web service references and interface specification an order of
magnitude harder as they need the method as well.  Maybe the TAG erred and
the ws-arch should object?  heh, wouldn't that be fun, not!

Dave


> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Mark Baker
> Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 10:19 PM
> To: Champion, Mike
> Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: Reducing complexity
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 01:23:28PM -0700, Champion, Mike wrote:
> > > I think that interface simplification/unification only gives
> > > you a false sense of complexity reduction. The complexity
> > > (both syntax and semantics) that you remove from the
> > > interface you will find in different form in other places,
> > > like the document contents transmitted through the REST
> > > unified interface, or the choreography computations which
> > > depend both on the data itself and on other external factors.
> > > So the total complexity of non trivial real world system
> > > interconnections is always far from O(N).
> >
> > +1  That's what I was trying to say :-)  The "conservation
> > of complexity" principle across code and data.
>
> With or without a uniform or a specific interface, the problem breaks
> down into dealing with an interface, then dealing with what the
> interface gives you.  As an example of how this looks, consider the
> interfaces that Dan talks about in issue 5[1] raised by this[2] email.
>
> One is;
>
> interface StockQuote {
>   Document GetLastTradePrice( String symbol );
> }
>
> and the other implicit one that he's suggesting by using GET is;
>
> interface StockQuoteLastTradePrice {
>   Document GET();
> }
>
> The same data can be returned in both cases.  But complexity
> *has* been
> reduced in the latter example, by virtue of the relationship
> between an
> identifier for a service, and the GET method.  You need less
> information, because with the former example, given an identifier of
> that service, you also need to know which method to use to ask it to
> give you the goods.  But the complexity of handling the data is
> identical.  Net, complexity is reduced.
>
>  [1] http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/arch/2/issues/wsa-issues.html#x5
>  [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-wsa-comments/2002Jun/0003
>
> MB
> --
> Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.   http://www.markbaker.ca
>
>    Will distribute objects for food
>
>

Received on Thursday, 21 November 2002 12:50:45 UTC