Frank Schönheit - Sun Microsystems Germany wrote:
Hi Stephan,
See <http://www.martinfowler.com/ieeeSoftware/published.pdf> for the
source of that term.
Interesting reading, thanks for the pointer.
However, I think Fowler uses the term "published" in a different meaning
than we do. While he doesn't clearly define the terms and their
difference, the sentence closest to a definition for "published"
("public" should be unmbiguous for anyone knowing Java or C++ or ...) is:
<cite>
However, things rapidly change if I put that software out on the Web as
a component, and other people, whom I don't know, start building
applications on top of it.
</cite>
That is, he considers an interface published as soon as he loses control
over (read: comprehensive knowledge about) who / which component uses
it. Makes sense, IMO.
But, with this definition, all our interfaces are published, even those
not tagged with the "published" keyword.
Why do you think so? My reading of the article is as follows:
Something marked "public" in Java can be accessed by everybody, and that
is a problem, as while some of those things are really intended by their
authors to be accessible by anybody, others are not (but must be
"public" nonetheless for some technical reasons): "The two cases are
quite different, yet there’s nothing in the Java language to tell the
difference." Introducing the "published" concept solves that problem in
that authors can now specify whether or not they intend specific things
to be accessible by anybody. (Technically, people could still cheat and
access unpublished things, but it would at least be clear who is doing
something wrong then.) This is the same situation as our UNO API:
While all the things are technically visible, clients should only use
those things marked "published" (they still can technically use the
others, too, but have to be very sure they know the consequences of
doing so).
-Stephan
> Thus I continue to think that
our usage of "published" is unfortunate.
(Frank, I always implicitly assumed you do like
what Fowler writes, as you two look so ... similar.) :)
ROTFL :)
Ciao
Frank
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
