RE: "Layering" terminology (was: Re: "so-called" keyword and layer 3)

[Keith Teare <keith@realnames.com>]

John,

I appreciate the problem. I have spent almost 4 years trying to get DNS
people to understand what RealNames is doing, and also trying to get
search people to understand it. Unfortunately both bring so much baggage
from the existing worlds that there is huge "unlearning" before there
can be learning. And even after 4 years I'm not very good at it yet.
It's even worse if you get both groups in a room at the same time. They
don't speak the same language and any attempt to speak to one confuses
the heck out of the other.

However:

How about the "Extended Naming Services Layer" (L2) and the "List
Services Layer" (L3). 

Naming is about names and their facets with the goal of a single result
from a faceted name; 

Lists covers search, directory and various other services specializing
in lists as a response to a query.


Keith Teare


> -----Original Message-----
> From: John C Klensin [mailto:klensin@jck.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 1:59 PM
> To: Maynard Kang; Nicolas Popp
> Cc: ietf-irnss@lists.elistx.com
> Subject: "Layering" terminology (was: Re: "so-called" keyword and
layer 3)
> 
> --On Wednesday, December 05, 2001 5:48 PM +0800 Maynard Kang
> <maynard@pobox.org.sg> wrote:
> 
> > Hi John, with regard to the precision of terminology used,
> > perhaps it might be helpful to adopt a more specific term to
> > describe each "layer" in the dns-search draft, rather than to
> > rely on numbers which might cause confusion.
> 
> That is certainly true, but, each time I find a term, it has
> ancillary connotations that add to the confusion.  I can't draw
> analogies to white/yellow pages services without picking up
> their baggage and history of failures.  I can't really talk
> about "global" versus "localized" mechanisms and databases
> without creating as much confusion as they help alleviate.  So,
> if you have suggestions....
> 
> But, unless we can find terminology that really fits, I think it
> might be better to force people to read documents and
> definitions rather than looking at a word and guessing at the
> mechanisms.
> 
> > A "Layer 2" searching mechanism sounds almost incredulous if
> > the OSI model comes to mind ("A link layer method for
> > searching names in the DNS?? Those IETF guys must be crazy...")
> 
> That is why the document was changed, after -00 or even earlier,
> to talk about "search layers" or "sublayers".  It is unfortunate
> that the list has slipped back into the use of the unqualified
> word "layer" and abbreviations like "L2", but they are certainly
> more convenient.
> 
>    john