Hello,
On 30 Aug 2011, at 03:20, Jason Zurawski wrote:
Hi Jeroen;
On 8/26/11 7:47 AM, thus spake Jeroen van der Ham:
Hello,
A long time ago we have had a discussion on naming, where we
finalized on Nodes and Ports. However, due to feedback that I'm
getting in projects where semantic network descriptions are now
actually being used, I have received requests to change Port to
Interface.
Which projects, and when have you interacted with them or when have they
approached you about this topic? You note 'requests' so please be
specific if you could.
The projects in question are:
- GEYSERS: EU project that we are also involved in, see
http://geysers.eu- NOVI: EU project that we are involved in, see
http://fp7-novi.eu- NDL-OWL: RENCI created an extension to NDL for the GENI context and has used also Interface there.
- PlanetLab: also uses Node and Interface in their RSpec files.
The problem is that in these projects the network descriptions become
part of a larger infrastructure.
One could say that about just about any project looking to adopt the NML
work, I don't believe these new groups are much different than anyone
else in that regard.
True. Traditionally our application area has been SURFnet, NetherLight and GLIF, which are very network-centric. For us it is a recent development that we look beyond the network and start applying semantic descriptions there.
Having an object named Port there to
describe a network connection point is confusing to users who are not
network-centric. They think that a Port object would describe
something like a TCP/UDP port, instead of a whole network interface.
This sounds like a similar argument I can remember from 2007, when the
founders of NML first got together to try to combine concepts from
NDL/NM into something cohesive. My hazy memory seems to remember
'interface' and 'port' being on the table. At the time the group went
with one ('port') since it was silly to endlessly debate on something
like a name when there were other important things to deal with.
That's similar to how I remember it. It seems that now we do have an argument for Interface.
Would it be possible that NML also changes the Port object to
Interface, so as to sync up with the schemas that are already in use
in GENI, Geysers and NOVI?
You note a key problem in this request - "A long time ago we have had a
discussion on naming". Lots of water has flowed under the bridge since
that date, and products/software have latched on to these concepts over
the span of years.
Speaking selfishly only for things I care about (e.g. perfSONAR products
and control frameworks such as OSCARS that have adopted 'in progress'
versions of NML), I am not pleased to hear about this particular request
given the amount of investment that has been made. Lots of interactions
(protocol based and internal software management) have been structured
around these concepts, and these products are deeply embedded and
deployed in the infrastructure of many networks. I don't believe that
this amount of investment should be forgotten as the group considers
something as simple as a 'find/replace' in current documents.
I personally would like to know more about these projects, and the
reasons why they are approaching this working group (and by extension
projects that have already started to implement NML concepts as is) with
a request to go through a lot of work to re-introduce an old argument.
I am all for collaboration, but it is not clear to me what benefits NML
will receive as a tradeoff with these other projects.
The projects have used NML (and other ontologies) as a basis for semantic representations. We are involved in both GEYSERS and NOVI. We've used the Port object, and others in the project have requested that we use the Interface object.
Other projects have already used the Node/Interface pair.
To me personally it does not seem like a very strong argument that we should not change anything in NML, because people have started using it. NML is not finished yet, while we're in the final stages, there is still a possibility of change. To me, implementers take a risk in adopting NML.