> No. A good standard should ensure that all implementations that satisfy it are > mutually interoperable (see, for example, the Whitworth stanard for nuts and > bolts!).
should it? I'm not so sure that this is the correct definition of a good standard. While I certainly see it's appeal, it seems to me that there's a tension between interoperable and flexible, and the business managers - the people that actually spend money on systems - do not wish to have systems that are fully locked down. In this sense, standards that lock things down are not what is desired, and the standards need to search for a happy medium. > This requires that: > 1. the standard include the the tests that supposdly conformant implementation > must pass; > 2. that test be necessary and sufficent to guarantee compliance; and > 3. Proven compliance to the standard be necessary and sufficient to guarantee > interoperability. Out of idle interest, would you care to nominate an IT interoperability standard that actually meets your criteria? > One way to do this is to for the standard to overdetermine implementation to > such an extent that exactly one implementation satisfy it. This is how 'de > facto standards' work. I don't agree with that either. In fact, if only one implementation can satisfy it, it's not an interoperability standard. As for Barry Smith. Ho hum. I wish such HL7 naysayers would actually move things along, and contribute to the overall picture, instead of whining about such trivia as version management. Of course the problem he describes is painful, but this problem is not new, nor specific to HL7. Other HL7 naysayers have gone and done something useful at least; that's why we're on this list. (though, strictly, the doing something useful came first. That's why I've stopped bothering to read Barry Smith) > But I was of the impression that that was not the intention of the > international > health care community. in as much as such a diverse group can be said to have an intention, it wanders somewhere between cheap, flexible, and interoperable. But you can only have two of those three. Grahame
