[CF-metadata] CF provisional standards

From: Bryan Lawrence <b.n.lawrence>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 13:40:14 +0000

Hi Jonathan

> > In that situation all we are saying is that - nope, yours is the only
> > code that can understand that data! If you want others to read it,
> > without writing new code, you may need to rewrite it! That's fair!
>
> No, I don't think it's fair. It is imposing a burden on people to redo what
> they have done, because the CF community was too slow in making a decision.

It's not just the decision it's the implementation. All proper software
development efforts (and let's be clear the reason for doing this is
about being able to write code) proceed in a loop from
 use cases
to
 requirements
to
 coding
which often requires realising that changing the requirements might
be better, which then means revising the use case to make sure the
changed requirements don't impact on the use case (and sometimes then
saying: do we really need the use case, we can't afford the
consequences?).

All this takes time. And what you're arguing for imposes the burden
somewhere else, and it's an expensive burden, which is much harder to
hide than the burden of time contributing to discussions.

Be in no doubt. I want this to happen. I want it to happen quickly, but
it's much easier to propose this than make it useful - no matter how
good the use case.

> I disagree. We have only discussed and agreed things when people said they
> needed them. I think it is unlikely that there is any single codebase that
> supports all of it, but I expect that nearly all of it has been used some-
> where to *write* data at least, if not to read it. Because data exists for
> longer and is harder to rewrite than software, we have to be very cautious
> about changing a convention once it has been agreed.

Huh? Are you really arguing for what I call a WORN archive: Write Once
Read Never ???

Remember I run an archive with the mandate to keep digital data in
perpetuity, and it's no help whatsoever for me to write data without
conforming tools. We can write our own tools, but the whole reason for
going down this route is so that we can exploit each others work rather
than keep writing all our own tools!

I'm afraid that your argument reduces to "thou must document what you
write!" (agreed, but it's not the complete story).

> I think I'm actually arguing for finding a CF version 0.9 which is
> > somewhere between COARDS and CF 1.0, but which at least some folk have
> > completely implemented).
>
> I don't think we should do that. We have more than enough to do with new
> conventions without revisiting all that we have previously decided over many
> years, and which is now in use.

Depends on your definition of "in use". There is no point in having a
"standard" or "convention" in that case. To take this argument to the
point of absurdity. I could write a one hundred paragraph document, each
paragraph could be implemented by one person and one person only. In
what way would this be a convention or standard? (It might be a useful
documentation effort, but that's a different argument).

I agree that creating CF 0.9 wouldn't take us very far, but it would be
illuminating to know what has been implemented!

Bryan
Received on Fri Nov 17 2006 - 06:40:14 GMT