I think what goes hand in hand with that, and what I was trying to get 
at during the call, is that with additional abstraction comes additional 
complexity.

Imagine conducting a TRAC audit on an iRODS-based repository, and trying 
to attain assurance that not only are the proper iRODS policies invoked, 
but that the scripting that underlies them is properly coded to take the 
correct actions against the data store in each of the variant data 
stores the system may be using.

Said differently, the modularity of the system creates elegance in the 
system design, but also provides more crevices for bugs to hide in; I 
think it's something to keep in mind. It's a similar principle to the 
more powerful the tool, the greater the capacity for large blunders: 
hand saw < sawzall < wrecking ball. :)

On 02/07/2011 04:34 PM, Dan Dodge wrote:
> What made the biggest impression on me was the role of "policies" as the
> way to manage the processes.  They can be expressed separately from all
> the machinery that manages the data.  It probably is obvious to many,
> but I hadn't thought of it clearly until Reagan explained it.
>
> Keeping (archiving) old policies around to track what has been done to
> manage the data over time and infrastructure changes seems like a good
> practice to recognize.  A data-management system needs to include a
> policy about managing policies.
>
> --Dan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The NDSA infrastructure working group list
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Andrew Woods
> Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2011 9:27 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [NDSA-INFRASTRUCTURE] post-iRODS reflections
>
> Hello INFRASTRUCTURE Team,
> I hope you are respectively well.
> I was reflecting on this past Tuesday's iRODS presentation by Reagan
> Moore and was thinking it may be fruitful to begin both an on-going
> mailing list discussion as well as an aggregation of "take-aways",
> features, recommendations, themes, etc on the wiki from each of the
> Cloud Presentations.
> Clearly, we want to be distilling out the practices offered by the
> various expert presenters and gaining consensus on the benefits and
> drawbacks of the different strategies.
> To those ends, I have updated the wiki page with some placeholders for
> collecting and comparing presented solutions.
> http://www.loc.gov/extranet/wiki/osi/ndiip/ndsa/index.php?title=Cloud_Pr
> esentations
>
> In addition to providing the questions to the presenters beforehand, I
> would suggest requesting brief written responses (if possible) prior
> to the presentations to help maximum the short hour.
>
> So to start of the discussion, what are your opinions of iRODS?
> What are preservation themes iRODS captures that should be added to
> the list of recognized practices?
> What follow-up questions do you have?
>
> As a note, a user guide to MediaWiki's editing features can be found
> here:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents
> If you have a moment, please add your thoughts to the NDSA wiki.
>
> Andrew