I'm in favor of this with one reservation. CPE is a dialetic with
challenges caused by the fuzzy nature of the english language.
I still have reservations about "simple names for a single OS or
Application or piece of Hardware CPE Language" --- the names will often
end up being dated historical perspectives, for example, if this
happened in the past, we would have
"Forethought, Inc, Presenter" -- which is currently called
"Microsoft Powerpoint",
"Vermeer Technologies Incorporated, Front Page" -- which has
become two products:
Microsoft Expression Web
Microsoft SharePoint Designer
(see
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/frontpage/default.aspx).
From a historic perspective, it is not a service to security to
arbitarily pick names that make sense at a moment of time when we know
that the names are arbitary. I rather see an arbitrary # ID and in the
XML allow for name changes, evolutions, rebranding etc. IMHO, it is a
solution that will survive time, using names that will become arcane or
in some cases, or very US American Usage centric in other cases. If a
product was first done in Russian and then renamed for US marketing
version --- what name should it have? Before it is rebranded there may
be a need to refer to it.... There seems to be just too many holes and
arcane staleness in this approach.
Ken Lassesen,
Office 206-734-4718 Home: 360-297-4717 Cell: 360-509-2402 Skype:
Ken.Lassesen
IM:
[hidden email]
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-----Original Message-----
From: Buttner, Drew [mailto:
[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 5:54 AM
To:
[hidden email]
Subject: [CPE-DISCUSSION-LIST] String Representation
At our telecon on Monday there was discussion focused around the 2.0
draft about the different representations of the CPE Language. In the
latest draft there are two representations, a string representation and
an XML representation.
The feeling was that multiple representations would lead to problems
keeping both in synch. For example one representation might have more
power than the other and this would make conversion between the two
impossible. It was also felt that having multiple representations means
that many developers would have to code to each, causing more work to be
required. The feeling was it is best to have just one representation.
Because of the use of XML throughout the community and in the other
related standards, it was felt that this one representation should be
XML. Note that this means there would be no way to write a complex
platform name as a single string, multi-line XML would have to be
provided.
Are there any other thoughts from the community on this topic? Is this
the direction we should continue to head? To summarize, the 2.0 spec
would look like:
CPE Name - simple names for a single OS or Application or piece of
Hardware CPE Language - used to combine names into complex platform
descriptions XML Representation - the only way of expressing these
complex platforms
Thanks
Drew
---------
Andrew Buttner
The MITRE Corporation
[hidden email]
781-271-3515
