KDM 1.4 RTF Avatar
  1. OMG Issue

KDM14 — Clarify the meaning of BinaryFile

  • Key: KDM14-59
  • Legacy Issue Number: 14170
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Benchmark Consulting ( Alain Picard)
  • Summary:

    The current specification describing the BinaryFile Class file is either incorrect or misleading at best.

    Since all files are ultimately binary, the BinaryFile Class, it seems, is more defined in terms of exclusion rather than inclusion. Normally we would consider human readable files as text files and non-readable files as binary. This is clearly not the definition used in the KDM context, as we would then have Image and ExecutableFile as extending BinaryFile.

    So given the fact that BinaryFile first doesn’t follow general conventions, it should then be better defined. As it can probably be interpreted from reading the specification here, a BinaryFile is any file that doesn’t fit in any of the other type of files extending InventoryItem. But that would still leave us with issues of how to represent files that are clearly Text files, but not SourceFile, Configuration or ResourceDescription.

  • Reported: KDM 1.2 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:00 GMT
  • Disposition: Duplicate or Merged — KDM 1.4
  • Disposition Summary:

    Rename BinaryFile to LinkableFile and clarify semantics

    Rename BinaryFile into LinkableFile to avoid confusion with ImageFile on the semantics of "binary" meaning "linkable" rather than "non-text"
    Clarify semantics. BinaryFile, ExecutableFile and SourceFile are related to computations, and contain representations of computational objects and statements in various formats, such as linkable object format for some platform, loadable machine instructions, interpretable bytecode, interpretable text statements, etc.

  • Updated: Tue, 12 Jul 2016 14:44 GMT