RE: Tag Languages, UID's etc. - My experiment with the Beacon BDR

[David RR Webber <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by INTERNET:stuart.campbell@tieglobal.com
>
'dont tell me about all this complex architecture and techy details, what
my
community wants to know is "what do i call my elements and in what case"'

The user community is looking for guidance.  Some will follow.  Some wont.
But at least there is guidance for the things they want.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Stuart, great point - and I also have found this out first hand with the
CatXML.org work that I have done.

We approached this by saying - this is an open approach, and
immediately the users said - tell us what tags we should use? Which
is counter-intuitive - what they are really saying is 'design us a
default that works'.

But where did I go to find those tags?   I did not go to a BDR or a BSR
or some techie spec'.  I went to existing industry catalogue work and
found vocabularies there already and re-used those.

This is the whole key - no need to invent yet another set of terms.
Each industry group already has these close by - and yes the 
industry group itself should take the lead in building the tag-sets.

Microsoft - since you mention them - are also masters at this
technique - working with industry groups to establish a standard,
getting them to use DCD, VB, and create DBO's thereby
locking in the Microsoft speak to the whole process.  But this does
NOT extend down to the tag level - key thing to notice.

My sense is we create two or three reference implementations such
as CatXML.org - where people can freely access all the documentation
and materials.   Plagurism then does the rest.  Easy to use Word,
Ctrl-F / Replace All / Change 'CatXML' to 'FooBarXML'  / - Save As !

Flexibility should be the approach here - not attempting to decree for
all industry situations just one inflexible approach.

DW.