[The Cornerstone] The Next Wave of Abstraction Layers
1 view
Skip to first unread message
ebenjami
Dec 9, 2004, 10:01:39 PM12/9/04
to cornerston...@googlegroups.com
In a question posed to the panel at the Phoenix No Fluff Just Stuff Symposium, Bill Grosso mentioned that the "Languages thing is a done with space", and he also said that the next big thing (the word "thing" is used generically here) will be about how to process data, understand data, and have application that are capable of processing any/many kinds of data, without a previously assumed data structure, this kind of like the search problem and google is all over it, they want to align application problems along the search problem, which is interesting.
One can take two things from the above discussion:
1. Languages are not done with yet, we have the Next Wave of application specific domain languages, or call them generic domain based applications. These will help add the abstraction layer that is often missing between a raw OO language and the target domain application. For example, if I want to develope and application for maintining product prices, then I would have ProductPriciningDomainLanguage, that knows about a Price object, and etc. Some may argue that this is nothing but an API layer, but we have to be careful here, APIs generally speaking are less extensible and tend to be inflexible, but Domain Language on the other hand is much more flexible API if you will. There is more to this but I guess we will leave at this for now.
2. The second point is that Data is imperative, and if applications are written in such a way that they dont make an assumption or a minimal assumption about the data structure. I guess this is a tough problem, inagine if you have an API that createsCusotmer(customerData), then customerdata better have the right structure, what if it didnt, what if it didnt could you not make an assumption about the structure and then search for what the API wants, (Google can you answer this one?). Well, it turns out that this is a tough problem, maybe some multiple pass system, or like structure pre-compile/pre-builder may do the trick, but it sounds too manual for my liking. So failing that, then really the solution is Domain Langugaes where the Data and the API layer are almsot merged into one another and become one layer, one abstraction layer, or two abstractions that work well together, and this way your domain language has data structure prebuilt and APIs for manipulating this also pre built, taking this approach and then you have a Generic approach to development, you may say how is this different to application development, well! It is certainly is a Generic approach to solving a common application and defining the language that solved the domain problem as a language that can be reused.
My formula for the day is:
New Gneration Languages = APIs + DomainDstructures (out of box ready to go, yes you may need to cusotmize, hmmmm, I mentioned a Cornerstone word, so if you want cusotmization then look at the cornerstone framework).
--
Posted by ebenjami to The Cornerstone at 12/9/2004 06:23:04 PM
One can take two things from the above discussion:
1. Languages are not done with yet, we have the Next Wave of application specific domain languages, or call them generic domain based applications. These will help add the abstraction layer that is often missing between a raw OO language and the target domain application. For example, if I want to develope and application for maintining product prices, then I would have ProductPriciningDomainLanguage, that knows about a Price object, and etc. Some may argue that this is nothing but an API layer, but we have to be careful here, APIs generally speaking are less extensible and tend to be inflexible, but Domain Language on the other hand is much more flexible API if you will. There is more to this but I guess we will leave at this for now.
2. The second point is that Data is imperative, and if applications are written in such a way that they dont make an assumption or a minimal assumption about the data structure. I guess this is a tough problem, inagine if you have an API that createsCusotmer(customerData), then customerdata better have the right structure, what if it didnt, what if it didnt could you not make an assumption about the structure and then search for what the API wants, (Google can you answer this one?). Well, it turns out that this is a tough problem, maybe some multiple pass system, or like structure pre-compile/pre-builder may do the trick, but it sounds too manual for my liking. So failing that, then really the solution is Domain Langugaes where the Data and the API layer are almsot merged into one another and become one layer, one abstraction layer, or two abstractions that work well together, and this way your domain language has data structure prebuilt and APIs for manipulating this also pre built, taking this approach and then you have a Generic approach to development, you may say how is this different to application development, well! It is certainly is a Generic approach to solving a common application and defining the language that solved the domain problem as a language that can be reused.
My formula for the day is:
New Gneration Languages = APIs + DomainDstructures (out of box ready to go, yes you may need to cusotmize, hmmmm, I mentioned a Cornerstone word, so if you want cusotmization then look at the cornerstone framework).
--
Posted by ebenjami to The Cornerstone at 12/9/2004 06:23:04 PM
ebenjami
Dec 9, 2004, 10:04:14 PM12/9/04
to cornerston...@googlegroups.com
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages