The (hopefully friendly?) banter continues.  Clemens Vasters: I don't think that database dumps are used much to move data between different organizations, nor are SQL/CLI connections across organization boundaries commonplace -- someone told me that there was this XML thing that does this stuff better.   Hmmm.  Somebody told me that the "X" in XML stood for eXtensible too.  All I ask is that you just keep an open mind, and let me make my case.  Since this is obviously controversial, I am taking my time as I want to get it right.  Still, the essay I mentioned previously will be ready soon, I promise.

  8:13:30 PM    

Clemens Vasters: That'd truly be silly, wouldn't it? [Executive summary: Those who only look at wire formats and are obsessed with loose coupling shall look at some more complex and real-world scenarios once in a while]  Hmmm.  I wonder who that might be directed at?

FYI: tomorrow, I will have been at IBM for 21 years.  I spent nearly a decade working on AD/Cycle Information Model and Repository tasks.  One customer I worked with during that period you may have heard of: GAD.

As to your example, there is no question that two "customer" entites that are semantically different should be modelled separately.  The question to ponder is whether or not "ALTER TABLE table_name ADD column_name datatype" should be allowed and what the implications of this are.

  7:13:51 PM    

Josh Lucas: I didn't know Sam was here. I'll have to keep an eye out for him..  Heh.  He found me.  We've "known" each other peripherally on mailing lists for years - never quite working on the same projects, but aware of each other's work.  Cool to actually meet.

My original efforts to capture a quick one line for each person I knew that I met have proven not to scale - there are just too many people here that I know for one reason or another.  What's been really cool is having breakfast with a table of PHP, Java, and Perl users; or lunch with Microsoft and a FSF person.

Mostly, I'm suffering from information overload.  Doc just showed up... I'm certain that his presentation isn't going to help on that account any.

  4:40:50 PM    

eclectic: Xoomle ... is a very nice RESTful interface to the Google API... Paul Prescod provided some constructive comments and suggestions though.  Paul's top comment is that the characters "method=" in the URL (note: not the design, but the characters themselves) make it less than perfect case study in REST.  Weird.  His argument deals with HTML FORMs, which have support for hidden controls.  Apparently the view that Paul is espousing, or the concept that API's like XooMLe's is RESTful, is considered heretical by some in the REST community.

  1:32:47 PM