[sc34wg3] a new name for the RM

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* James David Mason
| 
| My point is that if we do modelling, we need to have concrete,
| specific goals, and we need to get them established soon.

Graham and I did a requirements document for the SAM, actually, but it
was met by total silence, and so we took it no further:

  <URL: http://www.y12.doe.gov/sgml/sc34/document/0266.htm >
 
(It's a bit out of date, so some of the wording sounds very odd now.)

I believe doing a real requirements process, for both the SAM and the
RM, would have been very useful to us, and called for it many times,
but...

| If we don't have such goals, then no matter how fine our theoretical
| basis is, we're wasting our time.

Exactly.
 
| Now we probably do need a good theoretical basis, not to prove how
| good our academic computing credentials are (which is all the ODA
| people eventually got) but rather so that we can do some things we
| need:
| 
| * So we know what we're doing when we say we want to merge x and y
| * So we can make sense of whether some component of a topic is better
| done as an occurrence or a variant on a name

The SAM helps you with these.

| * So we know how many things really need to be reified

This one I don't know what is.

| * So we know whether we're boxing ourselves in when we try to do the
| CL and QL

The SAM was explicitly designed for this.

| * So we can talk intelligently with other communities with which we
| need to cooperate (e.g., RDF, SUO)
| * So we can write better tutorials

Not sure SAM helps you that much with these.

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