[sc34wg3] Unique names in Draft Reference Model

[Anthony B. Coates]

** Reply to message from "Steven R. Newcomb" <srn@coolheads.com> on 31 Dec 2002
09:15:27 -0600

Dear Steve,

> * For me, the primary reason for having a single
>   namespace is not technical; it's human.  Having a
>   single namespace is a significant advantage for human
>   beings who are trying to talk with each other about
>   TM Models.  With a single namespace within which
>   every aspect of a given TM Model has a unique name,
>   we can speak to each other unambiguously, without
>   having to be painfully precise every time we open our
>   mouths.  We can say only "zorp", instead of having to
>   say "the zorp assertion type", or "the zorp role
>   type", or "the zorp SIDP", since "zorp" can mean only
>   one thing (whichever it is).  (As a standards
>   developer yourself, you know how hard it is to
>   establish an unambiguous universe of discourse.
>   Considering the vanishingly small price of this
>   "single namespace" idea, and the potentially enormous
>   cost of misunderstandings regarding TMs and what they
>   mean, doesn't the single namespace idea make sense to
>   you, too?)

The single namespace is an understandable aspiration, but if you thought it was
achievable in practice, you wouldn't already have suggested creating ad-hoc
namespaces like "A::zorp" and "B::zorp".  Topic map systems will potentially
contain myriads of names, some controlled internally to an organisation, some
imposed from external bodies.  It will never be practical to find unique names
for everything within a single namespace.  You only have to look at human
language to see how hard it is.  I'm a physicist by training, and so I'm
painfully aware of how words like "momentum" and "energy" were re-purposed to
express ideas in physics.  Physicists now go around telling people that these
new definitions are the correct ones.  How curious.  Anyway, while I understand
the single-namespace aspiration, it causes more problems than necessary, given
that humans are already quite used to knowing what kind of "zorp" is being
discussed based on the context of the conversation.  There are occasional
mix-ups, but we do pretty well really.

Now, if you were to propose a single but explicitly hierarchically namespaced
system, that I could see as a saleable item.  Having a well understood way to
construct names like "A::B::C::D::zorp" would mean that people constructing
enterprise-scale systems could have some confidence that they wouldn't spend
all of their time in thesauri trying to find unused synonyms for the names that
have already been used.  That's my view, anyway.

	Cheers,
		Tony.
====
Anthony B. Coates, Information & Software Architect
mailto:abcoates@TheOffice.net
MDDL Editor (Market Data Definition Language)
http://www.mddl.org/
FpML AWG Member (Financial Products Markup Language)
http://www.fpml.org/