ORA-DM-332-B: Contradictory use of the term "application"

SECTION 5: Accessors

5 Accessors
First sentence of second para says 
"In order for applications to be able to operate on instances
of the data model, the model must expose properties of the items
it contains... These are not functions in the usual sense,
they are not available for users or applications to call directly."
This passage uses the term "application" in two senses, the 
first a nonstandard sense and the second a standard sense.
Usually "application" refers a software program that a user writes,
whereas "implementation" or "processor" refers to the software 
component implementing a specification and 
supplied by a vendor as a platform for the user to build his
application.  This understanding of "application" works for the
second occurrence of "application" but not for the first.
Indeed, if we try to use the standard meaning of the term for
both occurrences, the passage appears to be contradictory.

I think what you mean by the first occurrence of "application"
is that you are viewing the data model as being realized by
a software layer which is distinguishable from the XQuery or
XPath processor.  From that perspective the XQuery or XPath
prcoessor is an "application" of the data model.  But if you 
view things that way, then the accessors are indeed functions
that are callable by the "application".

For the sake of readability, if you want to introduce a 
distinction between the data model layer and the XQuery or
XPath processor above it, you should introduce a third term,
keeping "applciation" for the end user.  Alternatively, you
could rewrite the first sentence as "In order for XQuery or
XPath processors to be able to operate..."

- Steve B.

Received on Monday, 16 February 2004 17:30:48 UTC