Sorry, Martin, I was not meaning to criticize at all. I hope it didn’t come over like that.
My reflections on this come from an interest in how software and similar communities work; I have spent the last few decades hanging out in the complex mini-worlds of TeX and of TEI, and its fascinating to see the similarities between them and the CRM. ... > Please do understand me right. We do all these services for free. None of > this is because we would defend > jobs or technology. Everything we do is a big concern, not a slight one;-) . > Everything better costs again. We need funding for each migration:-( . > absolutely understood. I was not using proprietary in a critical sense. my concern is that the future of the CRM is compromised if there are any technology barriers to people working on it, and (for example) talking over the maintenance if FORTH lose interest., ... > The process, operations are complex and need control. XML is not a database, > it does not have functions. Of course you can put in in XML, and then use an > XML database on top to do the operations. > It does not help you running IsA constraints on classes and properties, and > trigger sequences of changes. > That needs code. it does. but I wouldn’t distinguish so much between the XML representation of the source and the XML representation of the functions. not the implementing the functions doesnt need code itself, of course. I am thinking of the way an XML representation of a schema can embed all sorts of rules and constraints in the form of Schematron. in another world, you’ll call that code, I call it part of the spec. >> forgive me, but this looks like a tail wagging a dog :-} > Well, forgive me also, what is the dog: The application S/W or the data > structure ;-) ? > If the search and update operations are simple, a data structure may be the > dog. > Otherwise....;-) true :-} > If anybody is seriously interested, we can send the complete requirements > analysis. > Then we can make together checklists what the benefits are. can you expand? the requirements analysis for what? > ….. > If we may go out of this business some day, nobody will be able to continue > the > process as it stands now. > precisely, that’s what interests me. how you get to a setup which any reasonably IT-literate person around the world can replicate, and take over the CRM in the (highly unlikely!) event that a Grexit causes FORTH to go bankrupt. Sebastian Rahtz Chief Data Architect University of Oxford IT Services +44 1865 283431
