Abstraction Process

After hours of discussions we finally came to a consensus about our development process within Nepomuk. It is an evolution from the previous posts about development as there is a new element the “Nepomuk Service” which I introduced. It is basically the set of higher abstract available and required functionalities. It is at the same time an access to the system and a communication device between the requirements (top-down approach) and the system (bottom-up approach). As I see it a functionality identified in a scenario goes through the abstraction to this service and then down in the implementation.

This could certainly be generalized as a development process for big service oriented architecture design.

Nepomuk is a particular service defining abstract functionalities relevant to achieve the “social semantic desktop”.

Technorati Tags: Computer Science, Nepomuk, Research, Software Engineering

Definition

I am in Nepomuk meeting, my presentation went well especially with our nice diagram. But now have huuuuuuge terminology issues leading to many misunderstanding from everyone and wasting a lot of time and money.

Definition is the first thing to be done in any situation.

If you have a presentation to do, start it with a slide named “definitions” and not introduction. Even the introduction relies on terms that have to be defined.

In software engineering many years, many projects in the world spend a lot of many on working without defining. Maybe software engineering itself is just a definition process. As wittgenstein put it philosophy is matter of definition.

So define, define, define, define, define!!!!!!

Oh and never ever use examples to define something if you could do it differently, it just shows that you don’t know exactly what you speak about.

Technorati Tags: Computer Science, Nepomuk, philosophy

nepomuk development

Okay, here is the last version of today’s diagram, after the comments of Knud about the verticality of the labels. So we’ll use it next week in Galway…

It looks like there are still some missing connections, maybe the “ontology design”, but I don’t know how to name it more generally. Or maybe is it another “forward engineering” process…

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software development

As I am working in the european project Nepomuk, I realize that my understanding of how software development is held is sometimes different from the one of others. So here is a picture which summarizes what I understood from what I have been thinking lately.

I am sure that this model is not complete and could be extended. Maybe the APIs could be replaced with User Interfaces… And I could add some arrows between scenarios/uses and components/uses labeled with ‘Refinement’… Anyway there is no perfect representation of a development process.

Actually I just did what I said previously, so here is the result of it, a much nicer diagram with streams and colors…

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my understanding

Today the result of my understanding lead to a graphic representation of it which I give you with this post. I find it beautiful and as one should know :

“And if it is beautiful, it must be true“.

Technorati Tags: cosa, philosophy, Research