Question: Individual annotations vs One large annotation (conceptual riddle for the interested)

[Gunnar Wrobel]

Quoting "Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)" <vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com>:

> On 11.10.2011 10:30, Gunnar Wrobel wrote:
>> Quoting "Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)"
>> <vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com>:
>>> Bernhard Reiter wrote:
>>>> You could make one known annotation to contain the list of dynamic
>>>> annotations if this is the issue. On the other hand, if a client
>>>> wants
>>>> to understand the contents of a configuration option, it would know
>>>> the
>>>> designated annotation for it as well.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Putting annotation paths that may or may not be known to a client
>>> into
>>> another, one, annotation known to all clients is quite the
>>> work-around to
>>> avoid having just one annotation to store (all of) the actual
>>> configuration.
>>
>> True and I don't think the clients need to have access to the list of
>> potential annotations. But that is also the reason for not choosing
>> one big annotation: Not all clients will require access to all of
>> them
>> because the corresponding features will not always be supported.
>
> Again, all clients will need access to all feature specific
> configuration data regardless of whether the client actually understands
> one or more of them features - the least it should be able to recognize
> is that *a* feature specific item is already configured and it can
> *thus* not configure another feature on top of the folder - or it would
> endanger the folder of being configured with two mutually exclusive
> features on top of one another.

You state again that all annotations are dependent on each other and  
can potentially conflict with each other. I disagreed before and still  
do.

>
>> I
>> still did not hear a compelling reason why we should lump two
>> annotations together if the associated features are sufficiently
>> independent of each other.
>>
>
> "Sufficiently independent" is an assumption that makes the logic Vulcan
> - a client will not be able to recognize "sufficiently independent"
> regardless of whether separate annotations or one annotation is being
> used, but at least with one annotation it'll be able to recognize there
> may be a conflict.

Why would the client play a role here? There is a specification that  
the client has to adhere to. The client should not need to try to make  
assumptions about independence or not. The spec however should.

Cheers,

Gunnar

>
> Kind regards,
>
> Jeroen van Meeuwen
>
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