RE: [xdi] Rationale and semantics for the 3rd markup model

["Loren West" <loren.west@epok.net>]

I'm not a big fan of the terms logical, physical, and abstract
because they don't communicate anything in and of themselves.
Sort of like the word "low" - it only makes sense when compared
to something "high".

If one model is logical, what is it compared to?  Illogical?
Physical?  And what is it that makes it more logical than the
others?

ALL 3 models allow you to identify, describe, and exchange data
so none of them are any more or less XDI than the other.

I think it would be a mistake to say that the inline and enveloped
models are just a translation of a logical XDI model into XML
because it places emphasis on the model itself vs. the virtues
of identifying, describing, and exchanging data.

It suggests that you should understand the model first, then 
understand it's translations into XML if that's how you want
to use XDI.  I fear we'll lose people if we try to get them 
to understand the 3rd model in order to understand XDI.

=Loren

-----Original Message-----
From: Drummond Reed [mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net] 
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 11:37 AM
To: 'XDI TC'
Subject: RE: [xdi] Rationale and semantics for the 3rd markup model


Loren,

I think I get what you're saying - that the two applications that need to
exchange data may need to first establish context, and that's what this
"meta-context" is for.

But in that case, as you said on the last call, the application *is* XDI.
XDI is the context.

That's why it strikes me that most natural name for the third model is the
term Ajay uses - "the logical model" - because the goal of XDI is to provide
an abstract, logical model for identifying, describing, and exchanging data.
All forms of XDI markup, including inline and enveloped, serve to map data
to and from this logical model. But the first two do so from the context of
existing XML schemas. The third one does so from the context of the logical
model itself.

=Drummond 

-----Original Message-----
From: Loren West [mailto:loren.west@epok.net] 
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 11:12 AM
To: 'Drummond Reed'; 'XDI TC'
Subject: RE: [xdi] Rationale and semantics for the 3rd markup model

Hi Drummond,

This is the best description of the 3rd model yet.  It's still
a stretch of my imagination to think about an implementation of
software that could take advantage of this format, because
by the time I'm thinking about implementing software, I'm in
context, and I don't know how to handle out-of-context data.

I can imagine, however, a conversational application where
context is communicated in real-time - much like human conversation -
and data is retrieved and delivered based on ever changing context.

This would be a great way to communicate in that application.
With this said, I'd like to suggest a few more names for it:

Runtime model
Real-time model
Conversational model (I like this the best)

=Loren



-----Original Message-----
From: Drummond Reed [mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net] 
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2004 2:03 PM
To: xdi@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [xdi] Rationale and semantics for the 3rd markup model


I had an action item from Wednesday's XDI TC call (for which Marc is still
working on the minutes) as follows:

# Start a thread on the list to: a) solicit our collective rationale for
using each of the three XDI markup models, and b) out of this, develop
consensus on the name we should use for the third model. 

The three XDI markup models were summarized in
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xdi/200411/msg00041.html. The first two
models are both "XML-centric", i.e., in both cases XDI markup is added to
existing XML markup in order to gain the data sharing virtues of XDI while
still leveraging any existing investment in XML schema, tools, and
applications.

The only difference between first two models comes down to whether the
existing XML schemas being marked up with XDI are extensible or not:

1) IF THE EXISTING XML SCHEMAS ARE EXTENSIBLE, then XDI markup can be placed
directly inline with the existing XML. Thus the consensus on the call was to
call this XDI markup model "Inline".

2) IF THE EXISTING XML SCHEMAS ARE NOT EXTENSIBLE, then XDI markup must be
added in an envelope wrapping the existing XML. The consensus on the call
was to call this XDI markup model "Enveloped". 

Because these two models are so clear, most of the discussion on Wednesday's
call focused on the third model, and when and why an implementer would want
to use it. Three rationales were put forth:

  1) When richer resource description is needed than is available using XML
QNames (and thus is better provided by XRIs).

  2) When the data being marked up does not yet have an XML schema.

  3) When the data being aggregated in a single XDI document does not lend
itself to a particular XML schema because comes from many different data
sources and there is no single XML schema that makes sense for aggregating
all of it.

After the call, I realized the killer example of the third type of data is
when the resource being described is one as generalized as "person",
"organization", or "topic". It would be all but impossible to create a
single XML schema that can describe all the data that might be associated
with a person, an organization, or a topic. The reason is that these are
simply very general concepts, that can be reused in thousands or millions of
data sharing applications.

It dawned on me that this made perfect sense. The universe of XML schemas
today exist mostly to describe data in particular contexts, i.e., existing
applications and data stores that already have their own schema. Moving the
data in XML in this case is the first step in being able to share it with
other applications, domains, and Web services.

But the more generalized the data, the harder it becomes to completely
satisfy this need with conventional XML, because the data is less and less
"schema-specific" and conventional XML is designed to put data in a specific
schema context.

It is for these classes of applications, where data may be reused across
many (i.e., hundreds or thousands) of different XML schemas, that the real
demand for XDI arises. Of course all 3 markup models supply the solution:
XDI markup can identify and describe the data in a schema-independent
manner, so the same logical data can be identified and shared across many
different physical XML schema instances. But if the distinguishing criteria
of the first two models is that the data already exists and makes sense to
be used in the context of existing XML schemas, then the distinguishing
criteria of the third model is that either:

a) No XML schema currently exists to provide the data context, or 
b) The context is so general that no single XML schema CAN exist to provide
sufficient context.

Although in the first case it can be argued that the easiest route to
establishing the context is to simply create a new conventional XML schema,
in the second case that's not an option. There is no such schema. The only
solution is a "generalized" or "universal" XML schema that exists to
describe things independent of any one specific XML schema context. That's
the third model.

Loren predicted that the right term for the third model would emerge once
the rationale for the third model was clear. I would summarize the
rationaled for using the third model as "the schema to use when you need
express and reuse data in a generalized, universal, XML-schema-independent
format". This would suggest the following names:

General model
Universal model
Independent model
Schema-independent model
Metaschema model
Abstract model (Victor's suggestion on the call)

Votes? Other suggestions?

=Drummond