Re: Automating the restaurant example

On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 03:18:31PM -0700, Burdett, David wrote:
> Mark
> 
> Your example involves a human, you, who gives permission to another human (I
> think)

It was meant to be a software agent.

> who is your agent who does the search. Even if the agent isn't a
> human and is software, then how did the agent software get, without any
> human intervention:
> 1. The intelligence to carry out and analyze the results of the search

Let's just blackbox that; no matter how you implement this, you're
going to need something that finds some service that matches what you're
looking for.

> 2. Understanding the semantics the schemas for the menu and order

It's hardcoded to do that.

> 3. Knowlesge that, after the receiving the menu, it could send an order.

It's hardcoded to know that's possible when it sees the part of the
schema that points to a menu-submitting processor identified by some
URI in the menu.

> I don't think your example qulaifies as "no human involved".

Well, no humans are involved, which is the most important criterion in
that determination I'd say. 8-)

> The point I'm trying to make, is that if these things aren't standardized,
> then you need to re-program them **every single time**. This won't happen as
> it is too expensieve.

I think we both agree that some more things need to be standardized.
I think we disagree how much; I think not much more, because we've
already got a suitable interface (GET/POST) and a suitable state engine
(hypermedia).  Unfortunately, most of the rest of the industry appears
to believe that a *lot* more needs to be standardized.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.
http://www.markbaker.ca             http://www.idokorro.com