Dear all of the technical mailing list,
I made a new message tothis list (specialized ;-), so it will be
discussed separately.
I do that because in the other message, I describe a real problem which
needs a solution, and this message is about thinking about a solution in
the archetype-framework, which will takes for years to come (if it will
come, maybe I am wrong in my proposal).
---------------------
When talking about specializing. Specializing an archetype is nothing
more then copying an archetype and add/change some constraints in them.
How different is that in programming languages, where the parent-classes
are read to understand the child class. There is no need to process all
the sourcecode of the child-classes to adapt the changes in a parent class.
This is regarded as a big advantage for Object Oriented Programming.
Easier to maintain code (and one definitely need a test framework).
Imagine that dreaded generic labtest archetype in the other message, I
wrote today.
How convenient would maintainability become if specializations where
really and life-inherited from parent archetypes?
Would we need a big part of the LOINC-database of specialized labtest
archetypes then, or would we just need to change the identifier and add
the appropriate terminology binding?
Maybe we could, in case of lab-test, just created the child archetypes
only in memory and on the fly, needing only a few keywords to describe
the changes. We could take a look at hibernate for Java (or many other
ORM-frameworks).
They do not deliver the classes needed for handling specific databases,
they offer a framework to create/generate those classes.
One could argue that specializations are not always inherited like
classes in programming languages. That is true. What I suggest here
maybe limited to the cases where it is real inheritance.
Best regards
Bert Verhees
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