Next time i think about getting a cheap
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Archive for September, 2006
Standards Development Challenges - Part 1
Published September 28, 2006 standards , w3c , webservices , wsaddressing 1 CommentDisclaimer: Nothing in these posts should be taken as a criticism of any individuals or organisations involved in the WS-Addressing Spec. It isn’t.
When it comes to developing computing ’standards’, it’s important that they are well understood.
Why? Because the whole point of them is that different people can develop hardware or software that works in the same way and in many cases work together. If that can’t be achieved then the standard isn’t worth reading.
I’ve now been involved in the WS-Addressing standardisation effort for a full year and though I’ve been a follower of open standards for many years (in particular the W3C when I was involved with mozilla), I didn’t appreciate quite how difficult this task is. This appreciation has come both from the interoperability testing events I’ve been involved in and from the weekly teleconferences I regularly attend.
The difficulties appear, to me, to fall into 3 categories:
- Different parties want different things
- Gaining a common understanding of the specified syntax
- Gaining a common understanding of the specified semantics
All of these difficulties are exhibited in both the specification development and specification testsing phases though #1 is more prevalent in the development phase. That different companies and individuals have different agendas will come as a surprise to no-one, and neither will the fact that is causes some problems.
“A camel is a horse designed by committee.” Committees use compromise as a route to agreement. Entirely reasonable, and in general a good way to work. I don’t believe WS-Addressing looks much like a camel (in fact I think it’s pretty good), though there are a couple of sentences that are metaphorical camels. These sentences were discussed at length, arrivied at as a compromise, pleased all the parties equally, however are very hard to understand were you not in those meetings.
Standards Development Challenge #1: Prevent compromise wordsmithing from hindering understanding
Beyond the standards development phase, and into the product implementation phase, the motivations of a company or developer can shape how the ’standard’ is read and interpreted, and subsequently implemented. These assumptions or prejudices may never occur or may not show up until well after any formal interoperability testing has occurred as many implementors may not be involved.
Standards Development Challenge #2: Provide implementations developers with the capability to check their assumptions (if not their implementation) in the future
Gotta run, more soon.
Back from Disneyland Paris and now I see why kids find Disney magical.
In 7 hours I’m on my way to Disneyland Paris. Sometimes work doesn’t feel too challenging 
Today is the 5th anniverary of the Spetember 11th attacks on America and the BBC are asking: Where were you on 9/11?
I was physically at home in Broughty Ferry, and ‘virtually’ in #mozilla and #mozillazine on irc.mozilla.org as I was doing loads of mozilla QA that summer. I heard of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center from a swedish guy in #mozillazine who heard it on a radio, and at the time the significance eluded me. To be honest I didn’t know what the World Trade Center was and I assumed it was a small plane and thus wasn’t very interesting. Then I heard a similar report on BBC radio which made it sound serious and then irc started to go a little crazy. That was my cue to move in front of a TV which made the scale of the news immediately apparent.
Staying on IRC (I was alone in the house), it was interesting to be speaking to Americans who were reacting in irc to all the news snippets coming in from all the different news organisations around the world. People from all over were reporting on what they were seeing on their tv and it would be fascinating now to see if the most repeated reports were more accurate and based in fact or if the repetition just implied it.
I stayed on IRC and in front of BBC news 24 for the next 8 hours, chatting and reflecting on the events of the day. The phrase that scared me that day and stays with me as it sums up my worst fears on that day was: ‘lets make some glass’ which was the suggestion by an American to use a nuclear bomb against Palestine as there had been videos showing celebrations in Gaza or the West Bank.
Here’s hoping that such an event never happens again and that if it does the bravery and stocicism shown by the people of New York, Washington, United 93 and later Bali, Madrid and London prevails rather than demands for punitive violence.
Just moved house, realised that it’s been a year. Where does the time go? I’ve had a good year all in all. Here’s to even better times in the future.
