Re: thoughts and some refs about AFS-2 UC (simplicity, minimalism)

On Mar 19, 2004, at 17:16, ext Dan Connolly wrote:
> My not-so-secret goal is Candidate Rec in six months.

I'm very sympathetic to such a goal, though I hope that
won't result in too rushed a rec which misses key issues.

> To do
> that, we need to stick to functionality that we've already coded.
> Twice. i.e. one or more of us has done the prototype, thrown it
> away, and built it for real.
>
> We have time to figure out what to do with the arbitrary
> differences between the implementations we've got (i.e. one
> implementation uses a comma where another used a period; one
> supports integer add and one does float)

I'm expecting that the DAWG rec solution will not employ built-in
datatypes (even if it recommends support for XML Schema predefined
datatypes) and will support RDF's datatype framework agnostic model.

I.e., if I can't express datatype values as typed literals
with arbitrary datatypes, then that is not acceptable.

I hope that this is a widely shared position in the WG.

>  and
> to spell-check our spec, set up a test harness, and that's
> about it.


I think that the WG actually has a bit more work to do than just
repackage some existing legacy solutions as-is.

Yes, most of the work has been done, and we should avoid venturing
into any truly new areas, but I don't think we have absolutely
all of the pieces in the form we need them in a single existing
deployed solution to make the WG's activities primarily editorial.

Three particular issues that I hope/expect the WG will explore,
and ultimately incorporate into the final rec are

(a) expressing queries and query results in RDF
(b) a standard definition of a concise bounded description of a resource
(c) a standardized means to request the concise bounded description of a
     specific resource

>
> Provenance doesn't look like a requirement to me.

> Of course I think it's interesting and key to the future.
> I spend a lot of time researching it and doing advanced
> development with it. But it doesn't looke like part
> of the so-called "minimum required to declare victory."

I agree that provenance should be out of scope for this round.

Cheers,

Patrick

--

Patrick Stickler
Nokia, Finland
patrick.stickler@nokia.com