Re: Comments from the QA WG on WebArch 2nd LC (extensibility)

And the references....
[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/issues.html#XMLVersioning-41
[2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/versioning-20031003

Stuart Williams wrote:

> Dominique, Karl, QA-WG,
>
> The TAG would like to invite you to participate in our teleconference 
> on Monday 27th September to discuss your comments on Webarch. We 
> recognise that we have a larger thread of work in progress on the 
> theme of Extensibility and Versioning [1,2], I am also inviting David 
> Orchard to the call since he and Norm have been the prime movers in 
> our work on that topic. However, to be clear, our (the TAG's) priority 
> for discussion on the call is to address comments/changes that 
> directly affect the Webarch document itself.
>
> Further work on Extensibility and Versioning is on going and we should 
> touch on how the QA-WG can work with the TAG and other stakeholders, 
> but that should not dominate the call on Monday.
>
> We were also wondering whether there was additional material in the 
> current draft finding [2] that, inf included in the Webarch doc, would 
> address any of your comments.
>
> Wrt to meeting logistics, We meet on Mondays at 3pm Eastern Time. We 
> use the W3C conference bridge at +1 617 761 6200 conference code 0824# 
> (0TAG#). I'll be publish an agenda for the meeting tomorrow. I'm going 
> to give 30-45min to this discussion, aiming to start at 3:15pm. That 
> will leave the TAG with 15min for administriva at the beginning and 
> 30min for other business at the end. How does that sound to you?
>
> David: can you confirm your availability too please?
>
> Best regards
>
> Stuart
> -- 
>
>
> Dominique Hazaël-Massieux wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Here is the QA Working Group's review of """
>> Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition
>> W3C Working Draft 16 August 2004
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-webarch-20040816/
>> """
>>
>> The Working Group noted that WebArch has 2 main intersections with the
>> QA WG own documents, concerning error handling and extensibility. Indeed
>> the QA WG addresses this topic, esp. in its "Specification Guidelines":
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-qaframe-spec-20040830/#extensions
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-qaframe-spec-20040830/#error
>> which matches with WebArch own sections at:
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-webarch-20040816/#extensibility
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-webarch-20040816/#error-handling
>>
>> While our views on error handling seems to be in sync, the WG noted the
>> following issues with regard to the extensibility topics:
>>
>> * Extensibility is defined as follow in section 5.2:
>> "Extensibility describes the property of a technology that promotes both
>> evolution and interoperability"
>> This may be what well-used extensibility is good for, but that doesn't
>> seem like an objective description of what extensibility is.
>> SpecGL says that "a specification is extensible when it provides a
>> mechanism to allow any party to create extensions", where extensions are
>> "incorporate additional features beyond what is defined in the
>> specification".
>>
>> * the QA WG would like to see the current wording of the first good
>> practice on extensibility (section 4.2.3) changed; it reads "A 
>> specification SHOULD provide mechanisms that allow any party to
>> create extensions that do not interfere with conformance to the original
>> specification."
>> The QA WG firmly believes that in no occasion an extension should be
>> allowed to interfere with conformance to the original spec; while it may
>> redefine semantics on top of the original semantics, interfering with
>> the conformance of the original spec would break the extensibility
>> mechanism itself.
>> The current wording makes it unclear whether the SHOULD is about
>> "allow[ing] any party to create extensions" or the property of
>> extensions not "interfer[ing] with conformance to the original
>> specification."
>> Ideally, WebArch would MUST-NOT the interferences with conformance.
>>
>> * section 4.3.2 reads "Experience suggests that the long term benefits
>> of extensibility generally outweigh the costs"; since several QA WG
>> participants have had a contrary experiences, the QA WG would be
>> interested to know about the data (cases and examples) and method by 
>> which this conclusion was reached.
>> The QA WG would rather see this either removed, or softened (à la "the
>> long term benefits of a well-designed extensibility mechanism..."), but
>> at the very least explained.
>>
>> * the QA WG would like to suggest to link to the relevant parts of
>> SpecGL on both the extensibility and error handling topics, so that the
>> reader can get a different point of view on this with a different focus.
>>
>> * more generally, the QA WG would like to work in coordination with the
>> TAG on this topic, as was suggested earlier:
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa-wg/2004Aug/0137.html
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Dom
>>  
>>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 22 September 2004 13:35:16 UTC