[MOBY-dev] Shims

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "Carole" == Carole Goble <carole at cs.man.ac.uk> writes:

  Carole> as the person who coined the term shim it is there precisely
  Carole> because there are a whole range of words that have been
  Carole> used.  mediator, adaptor, conversion etc. not all shims are
  Carole> conversions.

  Carole> the new term gives a fresh start. By the way, the first shim
  Carole> paper not by manchester is now published

  Carole> Adapters, shims, and glue--service interoperability for in
  Carole> silico experiments
  Carole>     U. Radetzki, U. Leser, S. C. Schulze-Rauschenbach,
  Carole>        J. Zimmermann, J.
  Carole>     Lussem, T. Bode, and A. B. Cremers Bioinformatics 2006
  Carole>     22: 1137-1143.
  Carole> http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/9/1137?etoc


What we need is an ontology of "words commonly used in computer
sciences, which all mean approximately the same thing". Or, perhaps, a
structured, controlled vocabulary would be better. 

I think that the closest word is adaptor, but shim services are
slightly different -- adaptors are generally stateless (although they
can connect stateful objects), while many shim services require data
to operate on. 

Shim's a nice word: it's kind of old worldy, a bit like widget, or
thingumybob, but unlike either of these it has a quite precise
technical meaning, at least in engineering...

Phil