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- From: Joe English <jenglish@flightlab.com>
- To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 10:09:51 -0700
Robert Worden wrote:
> A suggestion: in parallel with anything else you do, re-express the Schema
> spec in a mathematical specification language such as VDM or Z. Publish a
> mathematically annotated version of the spec.
Or, use techniques from denotational semantics
like Phil Wadler did for early drafts of XPath and
XSL [1,2].
This would IMO be even more useful for the Schema spec.
Z is good at specifying "what things do", while denotational
semantics is good at defining "what things mean". Since a Schema
doesn't really "do" anything, DS might be more appropriate.
Also, DS notation tends to be considerably shorter than Z :-)
--Joe English
jenglish@flightlab.com
[1] http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/wadler/topics/xml.html#xsl-semantics
[2] http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/wadler/topics/xml.html#xpath-semantics
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