[emergency] RE: OGC UoM Best Practices guidance

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

At the risk of catching a ration of flame from 
most all sides involved with this discussion, I 
tend to favor two ways of dealing with units of 
measure:

1. Specify that uom be specified either in the 
specification or that each implementation must 
specify what uom it uses, mandatory--and in web 
services, you just don't partner with companies 
whose uom in their wsdl does not match up with 
yours;
2. Specify metric system, period.

Both are aimed at letting the marketplace enforce 
the standard, but Darwinism has a bad name in 
these parts, since it inevitablly means letting 
chips fall where they may, and in these parts 
chips are people so both of these are 
non-starters.

In the choice arena between the concerns of 
programming realities on the ground versus 
getting critical information correct in critical 
moments, I tend to fall on the side of insisting 
on putting the burden on the quality assurance 
cycles in software development and test the bleep 
out of every last thing and just keep testing 
till it works 95% of the time. (Reality says 80% 
flies, but in this case, I have to remind folks 
that in these parts chips are people.)

Ciao,
Rex

At 10:42 AM -0700 3/28/06, Carl Reed OGC Account wrote:
>As I mentioned.
>
>
>Carl Reed, PhD
>CTO and Executive Director Specification Program
>OGC
>
>The OGC: Helping the World to Communicate Geographically
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--
Rex Brooks
President, CEO
Starbourne Communications Design
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
Berkeley, CA 94702
Tel: 510-849-2309