Re: Naming conventions

Il giorno 14/mar/07, alle ore 17:32, Jo Rabin ha scritto:

>
> A couple of rejoinders on the names:
>
> a) To elaborate on what Rhys says below, if we were to name the
> attributes after the relationship then we would have different
> attributes for canHaveNumberOfAerials, hasByDefaultNumberOfAerials and
> hasInstalledNumberOfAerials.
>
> A developer accessing this information would probably want to know all
> three of these by the same name: NumberOfAerials. The developer would
> distinguish between the different aspects or manifestations by  
> something
> in the API, I would think.

Sorry, I haven't understood what you wrote.

> b) I imagine that it will be common for the different aspects or
> manifestations to have different data types. E.g. NumberOfAerials
> (canHave) might well be a set of integers, whereas NumberOfAerials  
> (has
> by default) is an integer.
>
> The consequence, to my mind, is that putting the data type in the name
> is could be fraught with difficulties.
>
> c) The converse, though, as Rotan points out is also dangerous -  
> i.e. if
> the name accidentally contains something that might make Jo Developer
> assume a datatype - that should be avoided too. Does this mean that we
> should ban the use of has... and supports... as prefixes?
>
> d) If we do decide to decorate the names, I am concerned doing this  
> too
> early in the process. The data type might well change in the course of
> development. Our early assumptions about data types may well constrain
> our thinking and we might get locked into false assumptions. E.g. when
> we say Boolean, do we actually mean True, False and Don't Know?

When I wrote about the process to determine the Vocabulary entries I  
wrote that I expect a period, around the EOL of this group in which  
we will go back, look at all the entries we have and try to do a  
cleanup.
I expect that we will receive different requests for very similar data.
While in this group many of us have a lot of experience with device  
DB's, I expect that we will learn something and change our point of  
view.

This is why I'd be happy to agree on a naming convention now. Use it  
from day one of the vocabulary, but also consider a time in which we  
will go back and re-organize and clean up all the capabilities that  
we have collected. In this period we will be able to review the  
names, data types and accepted values and fix what needs to be fixed.

- Andrea

Received on Wednesday, 14 March 2007 21:49:02 UTC