Response to comments from cisi@ix.netcom.com

["Brian Frank" <bfrank@tridium.com>]

Response to comments posted by cisi@ix.netcom.com on 11 Sep 06:
 
> So, alarm state 4 will not be allowed to exist.
 

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning about alarming.  It actually is
common that an alarm does not reset ack when it transitions out of the
alarm state.  In certain situations it is critical that a human simply
be aware that an alarm happened, even if the alarm condition corrected
itself.

 

> Suggest this be clarified to show that an event is not a subset of
alarm
> but a separate and distinct object.
 
Actually according to the specification what we are describing is an
Alarm object which is stateless - in which case the alarm is itself an
event.
 
> However, I have not imagined a circumstance wherein anyone 
> would not recognize a spaceTemp as a point.
 
You are correct that a human wouldn't have much of a problem identifying
that piece of data as a point.  But the goal of oBIX is for machines to
deduce those semantics too - which is exactly the point of contracts.
By adding contracts to an object definition we are tagging them with
machine understandable semantics.
 
> I would prefer an organization which would clearly indicate what is an

> object and what is an attribute of an object, such as:
 
The diagram is pretty much just a standard UML diagram
 
> What is camel case?
 
From Wikipedia:
 
CamelCase, camel case or medial capitals is the practice of writing
compound words
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_noun_and_adjective>  or phrases
where the words are joined without spaces
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace> , and each word is capitalized
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization>  within the compound. The
name comes from the uppercase "bumps" in the middle of the compound
word, suggestive of the humps <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hump>  of a
camel <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel> .
 
> 5.1 Why discourage the use of name within the root object. Is there 
> any reason, other than social engineering, for this discouragement? 
 
This is because name is largely associated with how an object is used
within it's parent scope.  By definition a root object doesn't have a
parent, therefore name could be confusing.
 
> 5.2 I am struggling with "there may not be a root URI". I would have 
> thought there is always a root for any object.
 
Some objects, such as a calculated result from an operation don't have
the notion of persistent identity - therefore they would not have a
href.
 
> Please include an example of "an object that was the target of a
fragment URI
> within the document, but could not be directly addressed using an
absolute URI".
 
That is the purpose of the second example
 
> If the override rules are that children or attributes omitted from a
contract
> specification use the default values, there is no way to take away.
True?
 
That is correct - although you can make an object null which typically
how you achieve that result in programming languages.
 
> Except for val which is not an element but an attribute
> of a value object (or an umbrella term for a group of objects).
 

Good point, added the following sentence:  "Note the val object is
simply an abstract base type for the objects which support the val
attribute - there is no val element."

 

> 9.1 Re example: Comment: Previous use of list have included the

 

There was a type in the XML example - it is now fixed.

 

> 11.5 Where is the squaring of se and the division m/s2 implemented?
 
(m)/(s^2) == (m^1) * (s^-2)
 
> 12 Watches. Why worry about the exposure of well-known IP addresses? 
 
Well-known is a commonly used term to indicate publicly accessible and
usually mapped into DNS
 
> 12.1 Suspect the "The Watch URI is available directly from the Lobby
object"
> should be  The WatchService URI...
 
Good catch - fixed
 
> In the Note: "not able" should be "not be able".
 
Fixed
 
> Suggest "change" be defined as a change in state of a bool object and
a change
> greater than a delta value for a real object. The delta value should
be
> independently adjustable for each polled real object.
 
It is up to the server vendor to define "change", but in general it
should be any change - throttling on deltas is beyond the scope of this
specification, although could be implemented by a server vendor if they
chose.
 
> looks like the start time specified in the QueryOut is 2005-03-17.....
> while the start time in the result is 2005-03-16....
 
Fixed (someone else caught that one too)
 
 
Brian