parid0443 | Thu, 2 Jan 2003 09:42:29
What conforms to what is still labelled the RM? What does conformance to it
mean? Likewise for what's still called SAM? Where does conformance to one of
those say about conformance to what's currently out there as ISO/IEC 13250?
I just took a quick (< 10 minute!) skim through the RM and came away
wondering about conformance. I found lots of really important, valuable
information about TMs, but I also found myself wondering again whether this
is a standard or a technical report. Although much of the language is about
"must", which is standards-like, there is also "should" language, "may"
language, "may or may not" language, and discussion about what developers of
TMs need to think about, all of which sounds like a TR. Does this document
specify or interpret?
parid0443 | 21 Jan 2003 23:03:15
How would I verify whether a given piece of software conforms to the
RM? Does it even make sense to phrase the question? In the same way,
how do I verify whether a given piece of information conforms to the
RM? And is that question meaningful?
I know what the answer to these is for the SAM, but for the RM I must
confess that I have no idea, and in my opinion standards are only
about one single thing: drawing the line between conformance and
non-conformance. A standard that doesn't do that isn't a standard, in
my opinion.
parid0443 | 25 Jan 2003 13:06:27
I see it rather differently. If the RM really is only an analytical
tool for understanding how knowledge models work and how they relate
to one another I don't see a need for any conformance clause at all.
A conformance clause implies that there will either be data sets (be
it documents or databases) or implementations that follow the model.
Having a conformance clause that essentially applies to other
specifications rather than to data/implementations does not really
make much sense, I think. Those other specification will need to make
sure that they themselves provide the right conformance criteria and
will not reference the RM for additional conformance constraints.
And in any case you can tune conformance by tuning the mapping from
technology X to the RM, so it's not really clear that the conformance
constraints can really accomplish anything anyway.