DesignaTions
From SPA Wiki
This discussion relates to an OT2001 conference session: 1
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In this workshop participants were asked to explore the creation of "designations", as defined by Michael Jackson in "Software Requirements & Specifications".
The links below and on subseqent pages point to pictures of the flip chart sheets produced. (There seems to be a limit of 3 uploaded images per wiki page.)
If you were there, please feel free to add details. I'll try to do the same myself soon -- JohnDaniels
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Though stimulated and provoked :-) I have to admit to coming out of this session slightly depressed by the difficulty of making effective designations even for a simple model. By trying to ground the terms being used in a model by refering to things, events and relationships in the world the model is being derived from, means that the designations themselves are a model, and the problem just shifts. Richard's suggestion that events (and I would add roles) are best used for designating entities is a neat way of sidestepping some of the issues, but again that means you end up developing an ungrounded event model to support the entity model. Does information theory have anything to say about this, I wonder... -- DavidHarvey
