On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 14:01 +0100, Bob Cowdery wrote: > I think it would be useful, certainly for me to have a glossary of terms > as we proceed. I think we have introduced so far: > > space, topology, service, process, node, point, graph, point set, > composition, orchestration, protocol, encoding format, messaging.
Sure. Let's just not get too hung up yet on definitions. Some of these terms are (still) usefully vague, some will be defined by ostension, and some will be just flat-out wrong. The need to define or correct a term will probably emerge on its own. Citing Quine again, the fruits of clarity are on the whole to be preferred to the fruits of confusion, but the fruits of neither are to be despised :-) > ...Would it be sensible > to create a topics list first so we don't get bogged down on one issue. > I think working both ends towards the middle is also a good policy so > hot issues can have a proof-of-concept in parallel to the thought > process... Let's push ahead a little further, then we can review and see how to attack the questions that arise. I completely agree that both-ends-inward is the right way. The one new term I'd like to introduce here is neighborhood, since that's the concept that lets us talk equivalently about point sets and graphs. Roughly speaking, two nodes are in the same neighborhood (in our context) when they can talk more-or-less directly to one another (whether by messages or some other medium, we don't say or care yet). In graph terms, they have one or a small number of edges (perhaps through other nodes) connecting them. In terms of point sets, being neighbors means they're "close" in some specific sense. [Looking at the graph-point duality, closeness will probably be equivalent to the number of edges in the shortest path between two nodes.] 73 Frank AB2KT _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com
