|
No. Your simplification conflates (into a hopeless muddle, I'm afraid) the two points which my more exact language is intended to distinguish. Filling out a form, as an example of submitting data from one expert domain to another, introduces through the experience of most readers of that example, the two assumptions which I feel are unwarranted and which I feel underlie the dangers of SDVs. One is that the submitter and the receiver of the data share semantic understanding broad enough to subsume all of the salient points of expertise on both sides. That is, there is nothing in the preparer's expert understanding of the data, nor in the recipient's, not covered by their prior understanding of each other's domains. This 'white box' view of interoperability contradicts the very nature of the specialization which defines expertise, and in the real world is only to be found within an homogenous and monolithic organization. Forms are intended to provide the (for efficiency's sake, smallest possible) common denominator for transmitting data between expert domains where, by the very nature of expert specialization, it will be differently used with different semantics in each location. Precisely what we cannot assume is that whoever submits the form 'must be an expert not just in the subject of the form but in the form itself' when what is meant by 'the subject of the form' is the subject as understood by the recipient, who will process that form according to his own expertise within his own specialized domain.
The other thing we should not assume is the form itself: it is the very SDV which I am arguing against. In other words, data submitted by an expert who collected and formatted it to the full expression of his expertise will not be data in the specific form which an expert in a different domain would expect to process it for his own particular purposes.The form which you use in your example is precisely the compromised common denominator of an SDV which does not adequately serve the expertise of the domain from which the data comes nor that to which it goes.
Your simplification and example therefore utterly misstate my point, and illustrate it with the very thing I claim that a proper understanding of my point cannot countenance. Granted my language may be heavy going and demanding, but it makes the point as simply as possible, if no simpler.
--Walter Perry
|
Previous Message
Up
