1.6 Follow Standards
April 15th, 2009 — Marieke GuyIt is advisable to follow standards where applicable. If possible it makes sense to piggy-back on to accepted Web-oriented standards and use well know standards from international authorities: IEEE, W3C, OAI or from successful, established companies. You could refer to the W3C Web Applications Working Group. Where an existing standard isn’t available or appropriate then be consistent, clear, and well-documented.
Although standards are useful and important it is crucial that you don’t get bogged down by them. Some standards may be difficult to interpret or not openly available. Innovation is sometimes more important than standards.
“Having a hand-designed XML (…) response is much less attractive than reusing standards such as Dublin Core, SIOC, SKOS, Bibliontology and so on.“
April 24th, 2009 at 9:42 am
[...] 1.6 Follow Standards [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 11:17 am
I find the second paragraph above very confusing. It might be read as suggesting that a standard can be ignored if I happen to find it “difficult to interpret”, which is surely not the sort of advice we should be offering?
I also think the (implied) opposition between “innovation” and “standards” needs qualification: much (most? all?) “innovative” development makes extensive use of “standards”.
It seems to me the key issue here is, as I noted in my comment on the introduction, understanding the context within which one is operating, the contexts for which particular standards were designed and/or are applicable/appropriate, and on that basis making informed decisions about the deployment of those standards.