Re: [soa-rm-ra] RWE mismatch in latest figure 4

[Francis McCabe <frankmccabe@mac.com>]

The distinction between goal and intent seems to me to be a little slippery.

Conventionally, the idea is that intent captures the commitment that an actor has to achieve a goal. An actor may have many goals, but those that are committed to are those the actor intends.

Action is about volition - an actor intends that the action happen. 

The original definition of action went something like the application of force on an object. However, that does not seem to translate too well to software systems. The idea of application of intent is that that is something that can be done entirely in software: the program calls the right function because that is what the program 'wanted' to do.

There does seem to be a real distinction between goals and intents -- the commitment operator (if you will).

The rest is up for word-smithing and clarification.

Frank

On Oct 6, 2008, at 2:37 PM, Ken Laskey wrote:

In Figure 4, the Actor has a Goal that is committed to via Intent, and the result of that Intent is to apply an Action that causes a RWE.  Now the figure says the Intent is the desired RWE. However, we really have two different RWEs and not the one in the figure, because the RWE caused by the Action may not be the desired RWE.  For example, I have the Goal of going home and to make this happen I get into my car with the desired RWE of getting home.  Due to my Action, I get into an accident and don't make it home.  Thus, I have a mismatch between the desired and actual RWE.

In working through this, I am not clear how Goal differs from Intent and why the Goal is committed via the Intent.  What would happen if Intent was removed and the Goal has the desired RWE and the Goal is committed to via Action which causes the actual RWE?

Ken

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ken Laskey

MITRE Corporation, M/S H305     phone:  703-983-7934

7515 Colshire Drive                        fax:        703-983-1379

McLean VA 22102-7508

smime.p7s