Re: profiles/modules/levels

At 03:07 PM 4/29/03 -0400, Mark Skall wrote:

>>In my view, all of GL9 (extensions) is about functional extensions to the 
>>technology.  It is not about ways in which a spec's conformance model (or 
>>conformance policy), per se, might exceed and extend SpecGL's 
>>concepts.  A new DoV, or a generic catch-all DoV, is about the latter.
>
>I strongly disagree.

No wonder.  I think we're talking about different things...

> From SpecGL " An extension to a specification is a mechanism to 
> incorporate functionality beyond what is defined in a 
> specification."  You're interpreting "functionality" too narrowly. The 
> intent is to allow implementations to do things above and beyond the 
> requirements in the standard.  We're now talking about extending SpecGL 
> in an implementation of it.  Our "functionality" are all the requirements 
> in SpecGL (everything with a conformance requirement in the form of 
> "MUST".  Implementations of SpecGL are specifications and when these 
> specifications include additional concepts that were not enumerated in 
> SpecGL, that's clearly an extension.

We're talking about different things.  When you talk about GL9 Extensions, 
you're talking about conformance of a target specification to SpecGL.  When 
I was talking about GL9 extensions, I was talking about conformance of an 
implementation (of some Class of Product of the specification) to the 
target specification.

Andrew's original comment was this:  "At the moment we have specific 
checkpoints for p, m and l. But if someone wants to use a new type of Dov 
called 'personality' or whatever then SpecGL is silent."

So, if "someone", i.e., a target specification, wanted to talk about its 
own conformance to SpecGL, then yes, the new DoV could be described as an 
extension to SpecGL.  However, SpecGL does not require that a target 
specification say anything about its own conformance to SpecGL.  Therefore 
the target specification in fact does not have to talk about new-DoV as a 
dimension of variability, or describe its relationship to other DoV, or any 
of the things that we *do* require target specifications do for DoV.

Look at it another way.  If target specification uses 'profiles', then 
SpecGL requires that the target specification talk about it.  If target 
specification, in its conformance policy, defines a new way in which 
conformant target implementations of target specification may vary (i.e., a 
new dimension, "new-DoV"), then "SpecGL is silent".  Nothing in SpecGL 
requires that target specification discuss it.

If in fact you are saying that SpecGL's extensions guideline (GL9) somehow 
requires that target specification discuss the nature its new-DoV and 
interrelationships with Enumerated DoV, that is a surprising interpretation 
of GL9 to me.  I just reread all of GL9, and I strongly disagree.

-Lofton.

Received on Tuesday, 29 April 2003 17:01:30 UTC