Re: [smartgrid-interest] Energy Market Information Exchange Charter - supporters wanted; ready for submission to create Technical Committee

[Brian Frank <brian@skyfoundry.com>]

My understanding as Bill said that this specification is about *modeling* - nothing to do with transactions or protocols.

If that is true, then the two most important aspects of modeling are:

  - type system

  - naming system

The type system is how we define data structures and contractual definitions.  I will assume that the "type system" will be XML Schema since it is the safe choice (despite being quite poor as a modeling type system).

The naming system is how we identify entities and reference them.  Any sophisticated model requires referencing things.  Independent of the protocols used, RESTful means that we leverage URIs for naming. 

Both modeling and naming are areas which oBIX has really nailed.  But it doesn't sound like oBIX is being considered for the model - which is fine and to be expected.  But both the type system and naming system still matter a great deal, especially how they will interact with the overall system.

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 8:59 AM, Considine, Toby (Campus Services IT) <Toby.Considine@unc.edu> wrote:

Restful interactions have their place. As APIs at a distance, they are clean and predictable. As part of transactional systems and open bidding markets, one needs the rest of the WS Transaction infrastructure. As part of a massively distributed delayed environment that may involve long running workflows, one may need a multi-document messaging based format.

 

Zooming in on REST is a little like zooming in on UDP, only a couple layers up. There are times when RESTful connections are exactly what one needs. There are times when they are not.

 

tc

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"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying ... that he is wiser today than yesterday." -- Jonathan Swift

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Toby Considine Chair, OASIS oBIX TC Facilities Technology Office University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC

Email: Toby.Considine@ unc.edu Phone: (919)962-9073 http://www.oasis-open.org blog: www.NewDaedalus.com

 

 

From: Brian Frank [mailto:brian@skyfoundry.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 8:42 AM
To: William Cox

Cc: smartgrid-interest@lists.oasis-open.org; Toby Considine
Subject: Re: [smartgrid-interest] Energy Market Information Exchange Charter - supporters wanted; ready for submission to create Technical Committee

 

Energy Market Information Exchange is an XML vocabulary to express price and characteristics, so the means of communicating is not part of the charter.

 

I can see how that is nice in theory, but I don't understand how that works in practice.  At the very least any sophisticated modeling requires naming things.  And naming things typically implies a way to reference those named things.

 

So I guess my question is - will the model be RESTful in that "things" are named and referenced with URIs?