Michael Champion wrote:
> 
> On Jan 31, 2004, at 5:03 PM, W. E. Perry wrote:
> 
> >
> >> Perhaps UBL will become the authoritative nomenclature in many
> >> real-world
> >> settings, but we shall have to see about that.
> >
> > How is that possible without vitiating the real-world expertise of
> > local
> > processes? The leap from homogenous enterprise networks to the
> > heterogeneous internetwork topology liberates local processes from
> > naming
> > conventions and from fixed, agreed data structures which constrain the
> > locally appropriate expression of idiosyncratic local expertise.
> 
> My personal best guess is that UBL will not become a widely used
> "authoritative nomenclature".  On the other hand, it may hit the 80/20
> point and get viral adoption -- what do I know?  Prediction is hard,
> especially about the future :-)

Although never publically stated, I believe a goal of UBL from the start
was to hit that 80/20 point.

Kind Regards,
Joe Chiusano
Booz | Allen | Hamilton
Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World

> Whether it does or not probably depends on the extent to which it
> really does capture that which is homogenous across local processes,
> and serves as a good enough naming convention that creates so much
> value via the network effect as to outweigh its deficiencies as a
> "locally appropriate expression of idiosyncratic local expertise."  It
> depends more on whether UBL gets the kind of buzz that HTML and RSS
> got, which overcame their woeful deficiencies vis a vis technically
> better hypertext and news syndication formats. I'll bet against this
> just because UBL attempts to standardize the things at the very core of
> every company's business process that are under tight management
> control, and hence not susceptible to being played with and debugged by
> geeks until they reach unstoppable critical mass, e.g. the way HTML and
> RSS came to be what they became.  More loose (and locally specialized)
> integration via contextual inferencing and data transformation is
> probably almost as efficient as UBL-based translation, and probably a
> lot less threatening to Pointy Haired Bosses.
> 
> But again, we shall see what we shall see; I'll be somewhat surprised
> if UBL succeeds, but not astonished.
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an
> initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org>
> 
> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
> manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>