[humanmarkup] RE: [humanmarkup-comment] TC Meeting

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Welcome back, Len,

Another case of bad timing. You can check the minutes of the last
meeting on the website for what we actually did. Suffice it to say
that we have just gone into a kind of formal requirements-gathering
phase as regards the schema. We also formally established the Human
Physical Characteristics Description Markup Language Subcommitee,
chaired by Sudhakar Gorti of Sun. We set the target date for everyone
to submit their requirements from specific subcommittee applications
areas and general applications areas at March 15, 2002. That gives us
enough time to get in touch with knowledgeable sources and gather the
information we need, we hope.

So, we are, in effect, stepping back, just as you suggest. And
discussion about these issues is definitely desired.

I am attending the three day face-to-face first meetings of the Web
Services Component Model TC Jan. 7-9 in Hawthorne, NY at the IBM
Research facility there. I am presenting on the inter-relationship
between HumanMarkup and WSCM. Kurt and I are finishing up the
combined pdf, ppt and animated svg that makes it up. We will be
posting the entire thing on the website eventually. It's very basic.
I am actually joining that TC, and will gather what requirements we
need from this arena in that process.

Don Brutzman posted an update of h-anim work on the Web3d list that
is interesting for its use of voice-activated behavior which relates
to interfaces for WSCM and will be important for us, too. I'm
including mention of it in the presentation, so it will eventually
wind up as part of that on our site.

Ciao,
Rex

At 9:20 AM -0600 1/2/02, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>Hi Rex:
>
>Unfortunately, your email went to my work account the
>day after I left for a long holiday.  I am now back at
>work.
>
>The problem I have at this time is that the draft schema
>has never been commented on seriously.  I have seen references
>to Kurt writing papers for a conference on the HumanML design,
>but nothing of what that was or how it would affect a schema
>based design.  Without some sort of feedback on that approach,
>I don't quite know how to go forward.   Schema design requires
>a very precise notion of domain boundaries.  Look at any relational
>DB design and most of the Codd rules are applicable.  Of course,
>that reflects a viewpoint overly influenced by relational design,
>but XML is better suited to that in many cases, so it is a
>rational viewpoint. 
>
>The XML datatypes from the XML Schema specification are the
>basic datatypes.   After that, the design of the schema itself
>depends on how the application developers want to work with
>the core set.  We may want to step back and ask ourselves
>again what is to be in that set.  Human identification systems
>are part of almost any database whose transactions require
>a user description (name, address, phone number, email) etc.
>These are not controversial and will be found in most business
>languages (eg, are they in UBL?) so a namespace clash is
>inevitable here.  Unless we pull the goals of the Schema
>into a set we can be reasonably assured is scoped to a limited
>set of applications, we are going to have more clashes of
>that sort.  Physical characteristics were orignally included
>in the draft because I forsaw an overlap between the h-anim
>like applications for real-time 3D and the information one
>finds in public safety databases.  Otherwise, I used the
>categories from our communications research.
>
>So, what happened while I was at home raking leaves?
>
>Happy New Year to all!
>
>len
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rex Brooks [mailto:rexb@starbourne.com]
>
>Hi Len,
>
>Is there any chance you could attend tomorrow's TC teleconference?
>One of the items on the agenda is going to be the question of
>formally asking for a gathering of requirements from our applications
>area for elements, attributes and datatypes that we need to consider
>for interoperability and useability.
>
>These are not design questions at this stage, just gathering
>information, which we need to do if we want our language to be
>useful. This became important in the context of considering
>interoperability which just happened to coincide with the OASIS
>Interoperability Conference in Orlando this last weekend. We are
>waiting to hear what conclusions may been come to in the conference,
>but regardless, we do need to ask our designated audiences--the app
>makers and users of existing codification systems, what we need to
>do, or perhaps most importantly what we need to not do to avoid
>conflicts and confusion of terms and data.
>
>The notion is that we charge you, as our Invited Expert, with
>formulating a plan to proceed with the first basic XML Schema after
>this information has been gathered--hopefully also gathering some
>reliable volunteers along the way.
>
>I'm not optimistic about that latter, based on my own experience, but
>we owe it to ourselves to try, eh?
>
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>
>Let me know, please if you can't make it, and have issues you want
>represented. Specifically, would it be useful to you for us to try to
>arrange to have you subscribed to the TC list? It seems only logical,
>since you are going to be conducting work, the details of which,
>might very well bore comment's list reader to tears, and would
>certainly give the impression to potential members who drop in as
>newcomers, that we are a bunch of propeller-topped dome heads, or in
>my case, bone heads.


--
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request