Re: Notes on the process

Bill Smith:

> >It is likely that cars will have IP addresses and will carry GPS devices. 
> >But cars will still be involved in accidents - even in remote locations. 
> >The good news is that by combining the input from the GPS device,
> >accelerometers, and motion sensors my car will know where it is, that there
> >has been an accident, that it is likely that I am  unconscious, and will
> >report these facts to www.911.com - using XML. It might do so repeatedly.
> >The bad news is that as a result of the accident, the onboard system is
> >unable to send a well-formed document. What is transmitted is:

Gavin Nicol:
> 
> God forbid that you use the Internet for this application, and I cannot see
> why you'd want to send the data in XML. More reliable protocols and
> data representations exist, or can be invented for such applications.
> 

Think again. Bill's application is a meat-and-potatoes application of
computer-telephony integration, and CTI application developers of all stripes
are looking at the Internet as a pervasive platform. They are champing at the
bit because of the fixed HTML element set; XML will overjoy them. And there is
already a Java Telephony API. While the Internet in its current state may seem
an unlikely platform for Bill's application, that may not always be the case.

Moreover, neither the current state of the Internet nor the availability of
other protocols or data representations invalidate Bill's argument, which is
about XML, fault-tolerant applications, and how the current ERB decision makes
XML beg off from processing them.

-Todd.

Received on Thursday, 8 May 1997 18:13:20 UTC