Re: [smartgrid-interest] Energy Market Information Exchange Charter - supporters wanted; ready for submission to create Technical Committee

[Brian Frank <brian@skyfoundry.com>]

My understanding as Bill said that this specification is about *modeling* - nothing to do with transactions or protocols.

If that is true, then the two most important aspects of modeling are:

��- type system

��- naming system

The type system is how we define data structures and�contractual�definitions. �I will assume that the "type system" will be XML Schema since it is the safe choice (despite being quite poor as a modeling type system).

The naming system is how we identify entities and reference them. �Any sophisticated model requires referencing things. �Independent of the protocols used, RESTful means that we leverage URIs for naming.�

Both modeling and naming are areas which oBIX has really nailed. �But it doesn't sound like oBIX is being considered for the model - which is fine and to be expected. �But both the type system and naming system still matter a great deal, especially how they will interact with the overall system.

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 8:59 AM, Considine, Toby (Campus Services IT) <Toby.Considine@unc.edu> wrote:

Restful interactions have their place. As APIs at a distance, they are clean and predictable. As part of transactional systems and open bidding markets, one needs the rest of the WS Transaction infrastructure. As part of a massively distributed delayed environment that may involve long running workflows, one may need a multi-document messaging based format.

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Zooming in on REST is a little like zooming in on UDP, only a couple layers up. There are times when RESTful connections are exactly what one needs. There are times when they are not.

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tc

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"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying ... that he is wiser today than yesterday." -- Jonathan Swift

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Toby Considine Chair, OASIS oBIX TC Facilities Technology Office University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC

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Email: Toby.Considine@ unc.edu Phone: (919)962-9073 http://www.oasis-open.org blog: www.NewDaedalus.com

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From: Brian Frank [mailto:brian@skyfoundry.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 8:42 AM
To: William Cox

Cc: smartgrid-interest@lists.oasis-open.org; Toby Considine
Subject: Re: [smartgrid-interest] Energy Market Information Exchange Charter - supporters wanted; ready for submission to create Technical Committee

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Energy Market Information Exchange is an XML vocabulary to express price and characteristics, so the means of communicating is not part of the charter.

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I can see how that is nice in theory, but I don't understand how that works in practice. �At the very least any sophisticated modeling requires naming things. �And naming things typically implies a way to reference those named things.

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So I guess my question is - will the model be RESTful in that "things" are named and referenced with URIs? �

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