Repurposing Data and Services

Does it make sense to talk about reusing services, or should we talk instead about repurposing?

The word repurpose is largely being pushed from the data/metadata side, especially the XML/XSL crowd. XML is certainly relevant to technical reformatting and interoperability, but may also support data being put to new uses.

• IBM defines repurposing in terms of metadata, with specific reference to XML
• The Role of XSL in e-business Solutions (May 2001), by Mark Colan of IBM
• Xerox Research on XML Schema Management

Meanwhile, some examples of data repurposing look like old-fashioned data sharing. Look at this abstract, which (when you strip away the fashionable technology such as intelligent agents) is just finding new uses for existing data.

• Using Intelligent Agents to Repurpose Administrative Data ... (Jan 2004) (abstract)

The word also makes the bandwagon-jumping antics of some product vendors explicit. For example, following 9/11, Siebel repurposed its CRM software to deal with Homeland Security. (Government Computer News, Sept 2002) What's terrorism got to do with customer relationship management, I hear you ask. Well it does, in the same sense that an FBI agent might say "He's a tricky customer."

XML is very good for this kind of repurposing, because it operates at a level of semantic vagueness where it doesn't really matter whether "customer" means "customer" or "terrorist". To my mind this is both a strength and a weakness of XML. It seems to me that if we want to promote the repurposing of services, we need to explain how to design services that can operate with a calculated lack of semantic specificity, with weak preconditions. (But strong postconditions.)


See also Reuse or Repurpose (May 2005)