Re: Inheritance/defaulting of attributes
len bullard (cbullard@hiwaay.net)
Tue, 07 Oct 1997 22:35:10 -0500
Andrew Layman wrote:
>
> I decided to learn about inheritance by talking to people in a number of
> different groups at Microsoft, ranging from products to research, from
> programming languages to databases to knowledge representation.
>
> I wish I had a good answer for you. I don't.
>
> Instead, I found that for every single behavior of inheritance (a) some
> people can give a very reasonable justification for it and (b) other
> people can give an equally reasonable justification for why a different
> behavior is needed.
>
> We are seeing that on this list also. Clearly inheritance is going to
> be difficult to work out.
>
> --Andrew Layman
> AndrewL@microsoft.com
If two groups express different requirements for inheritance,
then the system should support different requirements for inheritance.
Should inheritance be a facility of XML, or are inheritance
requirements met else where in the design.
Early in this list, object-oriented ideas were discussed
and rejected(? - assumption) for XML. By analogy, SGML
tools do not explicitly support or express inheritance.
But object-oriented databases have been created that
use SGML. Where in those designs is inheritance
explicitly supported?
Len Bullard
Intergraph Public Safety