[Abstract Interfaces Subgroup] Discussion Topics

[Adam Lally <alally@us.ibm.com>]

Our group is due to report one week
from today.

Here are a few specific discussion points,
most of which are already called out someplace in the whitepaper.  Any
feedback on these topics would be appreciated.

1) Analyzer Interface: should it be
able to process mutliple CASes in one call?
2) [Box on pg. 62] Does the CAS Multiplier
interface need any/all of the following capabilities:
        a)
Return more than one CAS at a time
        b)
Return an indication that no more CASes are available now, but that the
caller should try back later. (The caller may specify the amount of time
to wait before returning.)
        c)
Return an estimate of how many CASes have not yet been retrieved by the
caller.
3) [Box on pg. 64] Flow Controller Interface:
        a)
Should it be allowed to modify the CAS?  (Currently whitepaper doesn't
allow it, but Apache UIMA implementation does.)
        b)
Should the FlowController interface be kept simple (as in the UML diagram
in figure 12) or be more like the Apache UIMA interface, or somewhere in
between?

At the meta-level, to what degree do
these need to be specified in the Abstract Interfaces section, and what
amount of flexibility do we leave to specific bindings (concerete interfaces)?
 This gets to the core question of the what exactly it means for an
implementation to comply with the Abstract Interfaces section.

Regards,
  -Adam
_____________________________
 Adam Lally
 Advisory Software Engineer 
 UIMA Framework Lead Developer
 IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
 Hawthorne, NY, 10532
 Tel: 914-784-7706,  T/L: 863-7706
 alally@us.ibm.com