Re: Approach to USDL variant management

Hi all!

On 10.03.2011 15:46, Kadner, Kay wrote:
> Please find the minutes in our Wiki at
> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/usdl/wiki/2011-03-09_Approach_to_USDL_variant_management.

Sorry, I did not manage to send the feedback in time for the followup 
call. Nevertheless here it is. Please note, as a non-member I can send 
this only to the public list.

The following comments and questions come to my mind, when thinking
about a possible move from ECore to CCTS. They are meant for a global
USDL-only variant repository, not repositories for other types of
objects. In general a central repository for all USDL variants sounds
like a good idea to me.

technical
- are all concepts of ECore based USDL representable in CCTS?
   - will they always be for all variants?
   - is the basic vocabulary extensible?
- context categories
   - might require more than a flat list or lots of categories
   - compound categories might be required to limit the set of
     described entities
   - as an example consider a B2C or B2B over legislative
     borders, e.g. a German consumer buying a U.S. service.
     Both laws might apply for parts, which would require
     a country-by-role context category. (this is not handled
     by USDL at the moment)
- could CCTS unify variants, where one specifies two separate
   "fields" while the other uses a composite field?

process/organizational
- finding a mediating/governing actor could be problematic
   regarding effort and fairness for all participants
- how is market dominance weighed in a mediation considering
   possibly uncooperative entity creators?
- how to avoid the occurrence of multiple repositories with
   separate mediators?

semantics
- is CCTS providing an aspect of semantics for each entity?
- is there a notion of "similarity, but not identity"
   between entities?

How about extending the ECore representation to handle variants? The
central repository would deliver ECore schemata depending on given
input. Tooling still would be available with the requirement to be
able to handle all variants or tooling would require a variant
management too.

As a final note: I am not involved in the LOD community, but how well
does the CCTS "central schema consolidation" coexist with the openness?

Regards
   Jan

Received on Wednesday, 30 March 2011 13:29:57 UTC