Standing on the shoulders of giants
June 1, 2010 – 2:39 pmA colleague of mine once said “We were truly standing on the shoulders of giants. Some of us knew it, some, not so much.”
That quote is applicable in BACnet committee work as well as anywhere else. When proposals get written and before they’re reviewed by the committee, the original authors may not be in a position to continue championing the proposal. This happens from time to time, and when it does, the committee will look for volunteers to take up the mantle.
Such was the case for WS-033. The gist of the proposal is to mandate when and where wildcard values may or may not be used within date and time values. For example, the local-time property of the device may never contain a wildcard value because it represents a single moment in time.
Some years ago, (Bill says it was about 10) Bill Swan began a proposal to point out and clarify these issues. As Bill said, the proposal languished for face time as more important issues were discussed and resolved. When the time finally came to discuss the issue in depth, Bill decided he had too much on his plate and I volunteered to continue working with the proposal. The effort involved was to go through the standard, examine each use case for dates and times, and add clarifying language for each of those use cases. A lofty task, and I can only hope I did it justice and stayed within the original intent of the proposal. I think that’s the case, because Bill “blessed” it when the time came to send it out for public review. However, if it weren’t for Bill’s initial work on this task, the proposal would likely have not reached this point.
Fast forward to the end of the public review period and there were some extensive comments. Some requiring subtle, but important changes. So, the addendum will have to be revised and go through another round of review before it becomes published. I’ll do what I can to aid in that effort as well.
But, these days, my plate is also pretty full considering the work that’s going on in the IP-WG with IPv6 support (that’s “only” a new data link layer and one new object type) as well as the work within the MSTP-WG. Oh, right, not to mention my day job!
Coffee helps me clear the fog. If you've found any of the posts on this blog helpful, I could always use more coffee.