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Re: Email or Something Else

2004-02-21 08:15:25

On Fri, Feb 20, 2004 at 05:38:11PM -0500, Keith Moore wrote:

Chris, I think that you may a point.  We certainly seem to be starting
to define an extensible service, with many conflicting requirements.

that's why it's unhelpful to speak in terms of "requirements" at
this stage.


On the contrary. I believe we are getting somewhere near to
"requirements". 

And I do not see a disadvantage in "conflicts". What has been posted
to the list so far, have been "wishes": Some want to transport large
messages, others want to have a service suitable for low bandwidth
portable devices. Both are not really requirements, they are wishes.
Fulfilling any of these wishes is trivial and does not need such a
working group. Fulfilling _both_ of these wishes is a requirement.

And these wishes do not really conflict. A conflict exists if someone
proves that fulfilling one wish necessarily violates the other wish. 
But that's not the case.

What's the conclusion?

We found a "requirement": The service must be able to both transport
large messages and service low bandwidth portable devices. This is
where we can start do design and engineer a service to fulfill this
requirement. (e.g. negotiate maximum message size or transport a
handle for pulling the attachment instead transporting all contents at
once). 

If we find such pairs of wishes which seem to "conflict" on a first
glance, we should be happy, because that's the stuff which
"requirements" are made of. 

:-)

So we should take care to precisely list all these pairs of 
"conflicting" wishes, because we will lateron need this list to 
give reasons for why we have designed something that way and not this
way. 

regards
Hadmut


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