Microsoft's Standardized Verb Set

A long time ago I wrote about about "Speech Acts, REST and Method Classification". I was interested in the different ways that people had classified verbs. I've always had this opinion that we as developers tend make thing more complex by reinventing new verbs that mean the same thing as previously defined ones. We simply can't get rid of that habit. I mean, we can easily undertand why we need a common noun set when we build applications, however we just don't grok why we need a standard verb set.

Do you know why we need a standard verb set? The answer is simple, we need it for composability. A by product of composability is interoperability, Roy Fielding showed this in his ReST architectural style. That is, you only need four verbs to help you achieve the massively scalable and higly interoperable World Wide Web.

Now Microsoft has finally bought into some religion. For the new Microsoft Shell (aka Monad), they've provided some guidelines on the standardized verb sets and names that one use when defining a command. For reference, here's the set:

Common Object Verbs	Definition
Add	Add, append or attach an element
Clear	Remove all elements of a container
Copy	Copy a element to another name or container
Get
Lock
Move	Move an element
New	Create a new element
Remove	Remove an element from a container
Rename	Give an element a new name
Set
Unlock

Data Verbs	Definition
Checkpoint	Create a snapshot of the current state
Compare	Compare an element with another and producing the differences
Convert	Convert to one encoding to another or one base unit to another
Export	Export as set to an interchangeable format
Import	Create a set from an interchangeable format
Initialize	Prepare an element for use and set its default values
Limit	Apply a constraint to an element
Merge	Take multiple elements and create a single one
Restore	Rollback state to last snapshot
Update	Refresh an element from a source

LifeCycle Verbs	Definition
Disable	Stop and configure to be unavailable
Enable	Configure to be availble
Install	Settle in an indicated place
Restart	Terminate existing activity and start again
Resume	Begin activity that was suspended
Start	Begin an activity
Stop	Cease an activity/td>
Suspend	Suspend an activity temporarilly
Uninstall	R

Diagnostic Verbs	Definition
Debug	Interact with an element to understand a flaw
Measure	Retrieve statistics about an element
Ping	Determine if an element is alive
Resolve	Map a short name to an elements reference
Test	Verify the validity and correctness of an element
Trace	Trace activities performed by a specified operation

Communications Verbs	Definition
Send	Convey information to an element
Receive	Take or acquire from a source
Connect	Associate subsequent activities with an element
Disconnect

Very useful if every you find yourself at a loss for words (i.e. a loss of how you should name your methods). The interesting aspect about this set is that 3 out of the five verb sets concerns manageability. One of biggest oversights in developing software is the need to create objects and methods to support in the daily operation of the system. Almost all development methodologies focus myopically on only the functional domain model. Unfortunately, there's more to buiding a usable system than the functional perspective.