- From: Jan Algermissen <algermissen1971@mac.com>
- Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 08:07:55 -0800
- To: Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
- Cc: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com, www-tag@w3.org
On Monday, February 26, 2007, at 04:32PM, "Elliotte Harold" <elharo@metalab.unc.edu> wrote: > >The title is "self-describing documents" but what people are writing and >talking about are more "self-agreeing documents" and I find that a very >dangerous concept for several reasons. The sender's mere description >does not imply or mandate any agreement or processing on the part of the >recipient. Right. But the important issue here is, IMHO, that the (business-) transition the client went through (from 'wanting to order' to 'having sent order') is provable independent from whatever the receiver implementation made of it. In the paper based world I'd proof my case in court providing the order letter as evidence of the transition I made. A software client can only do the same if the message it sent is completely independent from the receiver's understanding of it (which can change over time). IOW, what is at stake here is not that the interaction suceeds[1] but that the sender is protected against the effects of decentralization. Otherwise the sender would not engage in the interaction in the first place. Jan [1] which we cannot ensure in a decenralized environment anyway > > >-- >Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@metalab.unc.edu >Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published! >http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ >http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/ > >
Received on Monday, 26 February 2007 16:08:21 UTC