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

[Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)]

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.

> 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.

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen

-- 
Senior Engineer, Kolab Systems AG

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