[sc34wg3] Review of N0393

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Patrick Durusau
|
| Are you using "interoperability" in the sense of your prior post
| (http://www.isotopicmaps.org/pipermail/sc34wg3/2003-April/001460.html)?

Yes, though that posting contains very little information on what I
think "interoperability" means. This thread is a much better place to
look for information:
<URL: http://www.isotopicmaps.org/pipermail/sc34wg3/2003-April/001615.html >
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| I think for a conceptual model that would make sense, but the SAM is
| a data model designed to support interoperability (XTM/HyTM/CXTM)
| and the definition of query and constraint languages.
 
* Patrick Durusau
|
| In the same sense that XSLT is "interoperable" with XML? Except that
| XML does not have a "data model," well, according to some people and
| I don't want to start that debate here, and so to be interoperable,
| one simply follows the syntax. So "interoperability" here means a
| congruence of syntax?

It's more complicated than that. Obviously, if you don't conform to
the syntax specification when interchanging your topic map you won't
get interoperability, but interoperability is also about having the
software that reads the syntax act the same way.

To me, interoperability means to be able to process the same topic map
document (and possibly schema/query) with the same topic map
implementation and get the same results.

Note that when you were asking about how application-defined merging
rules could be acceptable if this were the goal the answer was that
the *implementations* would give the same result, but that the
application would be modifying that result by doing additional
merging. 

Also, I wouldn't say that XSLT is interoperable with XML. XSLT is an
ancillary standard that builds on XML to provide additional
capabilities. Interoperability is for data and applications, not
really for specifications. (I admit that in theory XSLT could have
been designed to be incompatible with XML, but one tends to assume
that standards in the same family are compatible with one another[1].)

[1] Of course, anyone assuming this about the topic map family of
    standards would have been mistaken, or at least very much left to
    his own devices in trying to establish how.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >