EML discussion and conference call

Tue Sep 3 14:13:00 PDT 2002

Hello Ken,

I must admit that I was a bit taken aback by your email.  I have taken
the morning to calm down and give you what I think is a resonable
response.  Please do not take offense, as I have not meant to offend
anyone with this email. I would simply like to set the record straight.

I'm sorry that you have felt that our group is not open to changing EML
to meet your (or others' needs).  I assure you that this is not the
case.  In fact, we have made substantial changes to EML just since April
to meet the needs of LTER sites as well as independent scientists that
have given us feedback through the KNB REOT group.  I think your view
that we are closed to change may be a misunderstanding on your part. 
Several people, including myself, Matt Jones, Peter McCartney and others
have been working on EML for several years.  Matt, in particular, has
been working on EML since 1997.  I have been working on it for 2 years
now.  Peter has been working on it at least as long as I have, probably
longer.  Since we all have in-depth knowledge of the progression of EML,
we have all seen many of the same technical issues several times in the
development cycle of EML.  You are, in a way, seeing the very tail of
the development and hence, it may seem to you that we are all set in our
ways and simply want to argue over the points that we want to argue
about.  We are not being close minded, we just may have a better
understanding of EML as a whole and what has already been tried in the
past and thus,(I hope) what will work in the future.  I assure you that
any recommendation made is welcomed and it will be fully reviewed.  

I'm sorry if it seemed that your email was ignored.  It looks like Tim's
email made it into Bugzilla but yours did not.  Perhaps you could
reiterate any of the points within that email that you think are still
valid.  Really, the best way for us to track issues with EML is through
bugzilla.  It takes a bit more time to enter the bugs, but the product
is much easier to deal with than an email that can be easily forgotten
about.  Also, with bugzilla, you are guaranteed to get someone to look
at your problem because it will send us annoying emails everyday if we
don't.  

The manner in which we hold our meetings and phone conferences is
exactly how all technical meetings that I have ever been a part of are
held.  If you feel strongly about a point, you argue the technical merit
of your philosophy and the rest of the peer group responds with their
opinions until some decision is made.  If you do not want to back up
your recommendations with logical argument, then they are not going to
make it into EML.  

I would also like to address the fact that we all have other projects to
work on.  In the past, I have been involved with up to 3 different
programming projects besides EML.  Others have even more of a load than
I do, with grant writing, administrative tasks, etc.  I'm sorry that you
have had a bad time with your servers, but frankly, we all have our own
side problems that do not involve EML and we still find time to work on
it.  Once EML 2.0 is released and is usable, we should all have more
time to work on other projects.

In response to your comments about the connection metadata:  We will
have connection metadata in EML.  It's just a matter of what form it
will be stored in.  The members of this group have been having this same
philosophical discussion about URLs versus pre-defined connection
parameter schema for 6 months now.  It will eventually be worked out
like all the other issues.  I don't know how to interpret your last
sentence.  EML is free software, it may be used how you see fit.  But
what we are really trying to do is build ecological community ties for
site interoperability.  Creating proprietary systems will not meet that
goal.

That having been said, we really do appreciate your (and anyone else's)
input into EML.  We have been wanting "real world" feedback about EML
for some time now.  This is the first time that we have had that
luxury.  It can only make EML better.

I'm looking forward to the chat tomorrow.

chad

-- 
-----------------------
Chad Berkley
National Center for 
Ecological Analysis 
and Synthesis (NCEAS)
berkley at nceas.ucsb.edu
-----------------------

On Fri, 2002-08-30 at 16:06, Ken Ramsey wrote:
> Matt,
> 
> I am sorry I have not replied to the email discussions or submitted the
> example of why I believe that people (researchers, technicians,
> information managers, and other staff) are a valuable resource and
> should (in my opinion) be considered a resource at the same level as
> protocol, dataset, and citations.
> 
> There are 2 reasons for my inaction, the first is that I have other
> responsibilities that have been taking up the majority of my time, such
> as server crashes and responding to researchers needs. The second reason
> is that, quite frankly, I do not enjoy the manner in which your team
> seems to operate. By his I mean that your team seems to be tied so
> closely with the project that you do not seem to be open to change and I
> do not like to operate in that mode; where I feel I must argue every
> point or issue I would like EML to address. I also do not like that
> after being told by Mark Schildauer to email eml_dev with the issues
> from the last LTER EML Workshop only to have them apparently ignored. I
> am sorry, but I do not have time to populate the bug list at this time.
> 
> I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the workshops and
> conference call. I look forward to the release of EML 2 and will use
> what I can from the final product. However, like I stated in my last
> email to eml_dev I will have the mapping and querying application
> developed as much as possible to EML. If you cannot support storing
> connection information in EML, I will have no other choice than to have
> the application developed directly to our RDBMS schema.
> 
> I will join the conference call next week (using Groove) with the hope
> of being able to contribute.
> 
> Ken
> 
> ----------------------------------------
> Ken Ramsey
> Data Manager
> Jornada Basin LTER Project
> New Mexico State University
> Wooton Hall, room 209
> Knox Street and Frenger
> Box 30003, MSC 3JER
> Las Cruces, NM 88003
> (505)646-7918 (office)
> (505)646-5665 (fax)
> keramsey at nmsu.edu
> 
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