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

[Georg C. F. Greve]

On Tuesday 11 October 2011 17.51:12 Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
> You are right only when one annotation would 1) implicitly or
> explicitly trump all other annotations, 2) none of the data currently
> stored in the "several kb" value is eligible to be stored in
> configuration XML instead of annotations.

and (2b) no other use case stores larger amounts of data.

But yes, I was so far under the impression you meant to suggest we should no 
longer define individual annotations per use case and move to one annotation 
only. Your point (1) now seems to indicate that is not so.

In any case, an agglomerated annotation is always going to be "large" in 
comparison to the individual annotations it agglomerates.


> With more features then currently under review, which is a rather
> feasible scenario for the future, it is very likely clients will want to
> obtain multiple features configured on a folder.

Yes. 

And then they can request them in one operation by using the DEPTH option for 
the "one annotation per use case" scenario. If we build annotations more 
hierarchically, we can even fine tune this should that become useful.

But clients can also choose not to retrieve it all and all the time.


> One can perfectly well imagine the ActiveSync configuration to be
> obtained by applications other then Z-Push, as it is implemented more
> then once before already.

Indeed, and I hope that desktop clients will start to support this.

But when they do you don't want that configuration pulled down unless your user 
is actually editing it, because you will have to refresh that information 
anyway when the user opens the dialogue to edit mobile device configuration.

In the "one annotation per use case" scenario we don't pull that information 
until we need it, and then we pull only the information we need. In the 
"agglomerated annotation" scenario we pull everything all the time.


> Basing a design decision solely on what is currently under proposition
> isn't sensible either. We have to take into account the mechanism we are
> laying down as the way to go today for all possible scenarios that the
> future may offer.

Which is precisely what we're doing.


> The original question evolved around configuration information that is
> to be shared across clients, no?

Yes. But it does not answer the question raised:

Should there be "one annotation to rule them all"?

>From your previous mail I now take it your answer is "no"

In that case: How to decide what goes into that agglomerated annotation, and 
what goes into individual annotations per use case? Which is the metric that 
you would suggest to apply?

Best regards,
Georg
 

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve
Chief Executive Officer

Kolab Systems AG
Zürich, Switzerland

e: greve at kolabsys.com
t: +41 78 904 43 33
w: http://kolabsys.com

pgp: 86574ACA Georg C. F. Greve
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