Re: Traffic Analysis and Namespace Dereferencing

[Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>]

Henry S. Thompson wrote:

>
> In passing I would point out that one reason the XML Schema design
> labels _all_ URIs, whether NS URIs or schemaLocation values, as
> _hints_ is so that conformant processors need not dereference _any_ of
> them.  It was precisely because of concerns such as those discussed in
> this thread that Noah Mendelsohn primus inter pares argued
> successfully for this aspect of the design.
>

Perhaps another way of saying this is that there is an association or
relationship between a namespace and a schema.** The process of obtaining a
schema document from a URI may involve:

    1) local URL cache.
    2) an entity catalog
    3) a resource directory
    4) a network protocol
    5) ... other mechanisms

** This is not to say that there *must* be such a relationship, rather in
the context of someone or something who intends to express such a
relationship.

*** The process of dereferencing a URL in practice may involve any of these
mechanisms in the same way that a computer may use a local hosts file rather
than perform DNS lookups.

-Jonathan