A Simple Analogy

Finally I've got a straightforward way of explaining what I've been rambilng
on about with this process profiling business.

Consider a college library. You can make a list of the resources in the
library, for instance the book catalogues, there may be academic paper
archives, whatever. To this list you can add other resources such as a video
recorder, an overhead projector and a photocopier. You can go further and
for instance organise a timetable of when these resources will be available.
I would suggest that this is the current state of most metadata initiatives.
But look at the library again - there is a whole set of resources that isn't
being taken into account on the list - the human resources. Katy is a genius
at cataloguing, Fred know how to use the overhead projector (and can teach
you how to use it yourself if you like) and Simon makes a good cup of
coffee.
Now if I look at a catalogue of college resources I can not only find out
where to get a book, I can also find somebody to make me a cup of coffee.

I'm suggesting that if the processes of the web (web services, agents,
inference engines, whatever) are described in the same language as the data
resources (pages, feeds etc) then these can be reasoned about in exactly the
same way. The Babel of agents and engines is reduced, directory services are
simplified, advertising and discovery services (Jini etc) become more
interoperable. This strikes me as a way of making life a lot easier all
round.

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Danny Ayers
http://www.isacat.net

Received on Friday, 13 April 2001 22:59:57 UTC