xml-dev - Re: XML Schemas: Best Practices

[Curt Arnold <CurtA@techie.com>]

Henry may be able to say whether or not you can actually do what you
suggested.  I just don't think it would usually be a good idea.

The problem I have is that processing applications can't readily
consistently and unambiguously process the imported elements if you hide
or disguise the namespace of elements.  

Lets think about if one of the elements was a common business element
from a standard vocabulary, say something like mitre:address.  If I hide
the namespace, then I have to dereference the schema and figure out that
the unqualified <address> is really a <mitre:address>.  Either that, or
I live dangerously and assume that any <address> I run into is a
<mitre:address> (which could be catastrophic when similarly named
elements or attributes imply different units in different namespaces)

If the namespace was explicit, then it would be much easier to do
something like scan a whole bunch of documents, identify the
mitre:address elements and build a geographic index.

In general, if you want to define a namespace and schema that provides
elements that you expect to be usable in a wide variety of applications
(for example, XHTML), it makes applications much easier if the elements
are explicitly qualified in the instance document.