Re: Re: HA Object Model or Taxonomy?

[Gavin Sallery <gavin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Looking forward to seeing your further thoughts on this, Alan. In the
meantime, I've been trying to turn my jottings into a properly specified
API. I'm using Scala for the moment, simply because its support of traits
allows a better composition of attributes than many other languages - the
idea is that the model will be available in many of the popular OO
languages, but right now it's easiest to play with these ideas in Scala.

Anyway, it's very incomplete, but I've uploaded a flavour of what I'm
thinking of here:

http://hometechnologyintegration.org/api/

The approach so far has been to keep things very generic, but the
heritability of traits allows more specific sub-traits to be introduced
when necessary - I haven't got onto the home furnishings section yet, but
the tufted foot-cushion should fit into the model fairly neatly :-)

Comments very much welcome. I'll be adding more categories to the model
over the coming days.

Cheers,

Gavin



On 18 Mar 2012, at 08:09, alan.trevennor@xxxxxxx wrote:

> Following on the general discussion of a "getStatus"
method..
>
> I would suggest "GetState" is a better name for this method,
pretty much anything has a state. For example, a cushion always has a
state, but not really a status, since it doesn't have a formalised set of
statuses, whereas, an aircon unit definitely has a set of formalised
states).
>
> I see the main jobs of an object model as being to codify a subset of
objects in the real world (in this case objects of all kinds found in the
home) and to be able to indicate, in some way, their permanent or dynamic
relationships to one another (the ontology).
>
> Having a separate ontology is essential if dealing with a subject
areas such as published books and music CDs, where there is a dynamic
relationship between writers and artists and the things they create: For
example such an ontology needs to indicate that Brandon Flowers was a
member of The Killers, but is also a songwriter and solo artist and
producer.
>
> However, in the HA case, I think the relationships are more settled
and may be adequately conveyed in the object model structure. For example,
an illuminated house sign is always going to be under something like:
>
> \fittings\illumination\lighting\outdoor
>
> As to the level of detail.....
> in theory, an object model should be capable of accommodating any
possible level of detail. For example:
>
>
\furnishings\accessories\comfortItems\cushions\footCushions\fillings\hollowFibre\tufts
>
> would allow you to model each tuft of hollow fibre in the
aforementioned cushion, but of course it would be looney for the HA model
to go into such detail, but the possibility should exist. Who knows, one
day we may have intelligent hollow-fibre filling that can be commanded from
an HA network to reshape itself electrically. Ah! Brave new world!
>
> However I think that, to preserve sanity, at some point in any
practical object model you have to resort to allowing "freeform"
responses. So, to continue the looney example, I see no problem with an
instance of a cushion having a "getState" method that returns a
collection of filling object whose state is just a set of self-describing
XML objects - i.e. objects which are not formally described in the model.
Further, I think that in the HA sphere - since it's unfeasible to model
every type and individual variant of - say - TVs. So, at some point TV
objects just have to return a freeform string of data that only some custom
piece of code can interpret.
>
> Anyway, I am probably pre-empting the kinds of discussions we need to
have about the scope and limits of an HA model that we might develop.
>
> Regards
> Alan T
>
>



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