Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

19 – Building Communities of Practice
REFERENCING AND RECORDING INFORMATION
The independence of web services from platformspecific
architecture can provide the ability to connect
inherently different technologies. 49 This ability to cross
boundaries within system architecture, however, is not
inherent in the technology. The technology has no inherent
nature at all. The use of standardized communication
packaging in no way requires the use of
standardized languages. In fact, the ability to alter the
way in which the computer interprets data is now a fundamental
part of web services. 50
Altering how computers interpret data provides value
by giving the application a structural context from
which to view data that is received. By allowing the
computer to maintain a specific and individual perspective,
exploring complex relationships can be accomplished
with greater efficiency. In the computer world,
this individual perspective is based on a set of defined
rules that allow the user to structure and reference information
(much like colour-coded file folders and tabs
are used to organize business information within a filing
cabinet).
The explosion of new technology over the past twenty
years has provided software developers with an overwhelming
variety of tools for technological development.
A quick tour of the computer section of the local
book store will reveal volumes of books on C, C++, C#,
Perl, Python, and PHP for programming; HTML, XML,
XSL, and CSS for presentation / mark-up; and Flash,
Illustrator, and Photoshop for graphic manipulation just
to name a few. Each programming language has been
used to create applications that store, retrieve and/or
present information. Although a detailed review of these
concepts is beyond the scope of this chapter, the information
that follows will provide a valuable resource in
this endeavour.
The technology infrastructure and management processes
can provide information on the current state of
49
The technology used within a mobile cell phone that
allows for Internet access is substantially different then that
required by a server computer running a large electronic
commerce operation, yet these two systems can communicate
using the HTML language.
50
Alterations of web-based languages are now common and
developed under the framework of XML (eXtensible
markup language), OWL (ontology web language), RDF,
and other metalanguages. Metalanguages are used to define
specialized terms and are standardized using document
type definitions (DTDs). In turn, these DTDs allow industry
work groups to create communication tools tailored to
their needs.
organizational knowledge. Although measures for
evaluating organizational knowledge would be imperfect
at best, 51 it would provide system administrators with
the information to make system design decisions based
on behavioural patterns. (Integrating process management
tools with design models will be covered in greater
detail later in the chapter). Once patterns are recognized,
system functionality can be developed based on
these patterns. From this perspective, internal referencing
not only determines how individuals navigate
through a computer application, if designed correctly,
referencing can provide continuous feedback for identifying
changing patterns of behaviour.
Referencing
While referencing, applied within an organization, can
provide insight into managerial practices, sharing this
information externally can be accomplished by creating
policies regarding access to this information (and enforcing
these policies through system design). The creation
of policies can ensure that direct and indirect
stakeholder interests have been addressed when distributing
organizational information. Aside from the policies
related to the management and use of information
externally, the technical process that makes this communication
feasible must also be considered.
Referencing and exchanging electronic data effectively
requires locating and describing data efficiently.
Describing data helps the user or program determine
relevance, while structuring the data allows the user or
program to locate the data quickly. Once located, relevant
data can be recorded (saved to disk or printed), linked
(bookmarked for direct access to web pages for example),
or distributed (data can be published within web
pages, through subscription news feeds, or printed and
given away). Efficient access to data through referencing
provides extraordinary power and potential within a
networked environment.
Because of the large amounts of data available, accessing
it efficiently has become increasingly important..
Several types of structural formatting rules have been
established and are publicly available to developers for
review. Examples of these structural formatting rules
include document type definitions (or schemas) and
51
One such measure applied to communication technologies,
suggested by Hoekman et al. (2004), is to measure the
total interaction by monitoring the volume of voice telecommunication
traffic and infer levels of both movement
of people and trade / FDI flows (2004, p. 6).
Education for a Digital World 293