Re: Notes on the process

Gavin Nicol wrote:
> 
> >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.
> 
> I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like
> a nail....
> 
> For mission critical applications, realtime constraints and data
> redundancy are generally required. This to me implies higher level
> protocols than those codified in the data. XML doesn't solve this
> problem, and shouldn't pretend to. 

Systems of the type Bill and Jon describe do not use XML for 
real-time data collections.  They use it to move the collection 
into other database modules.  For every sensor application used 
for safety control systems there is a records management system 
that collects and broadcasts that information in filtered forms 
to different collection agencies.  These agencies use that collection 
to extract information for feedback to decision systems.  The decision 
systems tolerance for error depends on the relationship of time from 
incident to decision and decision to dispatch.

I think the problem here is drawing the line between what conformance 
means to implementation, or simply, what is standard and what is 
application.  Who sorts errors? How far do we as application 
implementors go with the spec and when does it become our 
decision to determine application design?

Some applications only want raw data in errorless form.
Some applications can handle errors.  The mission-critical 
approach emerges from time characteristics that 
determine where classes of errors are trapped by tools 
and tool users.

Lee Quin stated the boundaries very well.

lwn

Received on Friday, 9 May 1997 20:41:19 UTC