xml-dev - RE: Namespace and Versioning

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Thanks, Eric.

At that level of standards, it might be acceptable 
given the authority of the resource.  What can work 
for the W3C typically won't work dependably for 
industry vocabularies.   The rice bowl problem 
is too strong.

For general use in application domains in which sharing vocabularies 
is a weakly coherent behavior at best, it seems to be dangerous 
to depend on namespaceURI to establish a version.
Somewhere from oldeDaze:  "The principle of rationality 
is weak with respect to managing human behavior."

So asking them to "do the right thing" may 
work dependably in a minority of cases.

Len Bullard
Intergraph Public Safety
clbullar@ingr.com
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/lensongs.ram

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Eric van der Vlist [mailto:vdv@dyomedea.com]
Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 9:19 AM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: Namespace and Versioning


Len,

This is an interesting question indeed ;)

I have done a short survey over some of the W3C spec and:

xslt :            uses NS + version number
xhtml:            uses doctype + NS
xlink:            uses NS
RDF & RDF Schema: use  NS
XML Schema:       uses NS

The tendency seems therefore to be using namespaces for versioning.

This practice may be questioned since it can prevent the effort for
"soft evolution" of vocabularies.

While newer tools will be able to have the knowledge of the complete
history and support any release they wish to support, changing to a new
namespace will implicitly mean that the older tools will not recognize a
new format.

The XSLT spec is pointing an interesting alternative where the namespace
can be kept as long as there is enough compatibility to justify that the
older tools access the new release and the namespace can be changed
after a major evolution to block the access from older tools.

My 0,02 Euros.

Eric


"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" wrote:
> 
> I need a bit of advice.  It is suggested in a document
> that I am reading that the namespace be used for versioning.
> If in SOAP, for example, "the <envelope> element has a different
> amespace, you have to discard the message with a version
> error.  As SOAP evolves, you'll probably be able to
> use different namespaces to indicate certain levels of
> specification conformance or message dialects." - VBPJ August 2000.
> 
> Is this the understanding others have of the use of
> namespaces for versioning?  I ask because a local
> is requesting a version attribute and I can't think
> of why not other than the namespace is then a
> continuum of definitions instead of a single, say, schema.
> 
> How would you respond to that given the local is not
> deeply washed in things XML much less namespaces but
> can program to the metal?  Forgive me if this starts
> the "namespaces are evil" threads again, but some
> succinct, "intended to work like this" answers will
> be welcome.
> 
> Len Bullard
> Intergraph Public Safety
> clbullar@ingr.com
> http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/lensongs.ram
> 
> Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
> Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h

-- 
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http://xmlfr.org         http://4xt.org              http://ducotede.com
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