Re: working draft on architectural principles

Roy,

On Thu, Aug 29, 2002 at 06:30:15PM -0700, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> Where does that fit in our document?  Well, for one, our document
> claims that there is one WWW architecture.  Bah humbug.  We've already
> defined two:

Sure, but even your dissertation makes frequent use of the phrase "*the*
Web architecture", as if to suggest there was only one.  I think most
people know what "Web architecture" refers to, so let's just write that
down, and/or relate it to your definition of a software architecture.

I do wholeheartedly agree with the gist of your message though.  For
what I want to accomplish in the Web Services Architecture WG, it would
really help me out if the TAG were to get concrete about software
architecture, because that's what we're trying to do.  Principles such
as "Use URIs" don't mean much to us since it's mainly targetted at
developers and publishers.  But a principle such as "Use a uniform
interface" would certainly constrain our work for the better, IMO.  I'd
like to see the constraints from Chapter 5 of your dissertation in the
TAG document.

> So, given a desired set of properties, how do want to constrain the
> interaction between elements such that the desired properties are
> obtained?  That should be the focus of our architecture document.
> The constraints are the normative aspects of Web architecture -- those
> things we expect W3C working groups to obey whether they like them
> or not.  They are not wishes, suggestions, or good practice -- they
> are commands.

Well said.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.               distobj@acm.org
http://www.markbaker.ca        http://www.idokorro.com

Received on Tuesday, 3 September 2002 09:53:31 UTC